ShoutPost is really cool, and I hate to do it, but I'm moving my blog to a new .  Why?  Because visitors to a ShoutPost blog have to sign up and jump through too many hoops before they're allowed to leave a comment.  I know there are some good reasons for this, but it's just not working for me.  Anyway, I hope you'll stop by and say howdy at my new : http://mtrealitycheck.typepad.com

See you there, folks!

The worst thing about being a grown-up is ... no summer vacation. My stepson James has been talking about summer vacation since Christmas. Can't say I blame him. Summer vacation was - at least for me - quite possibly the best time of my life.

Sadly, James is getting a little old to enjoy summer vacation to its fullest; he's 16. The best age for summer vacation is 13.  At 13, no one expects you to get a summer job. If you do, you're seen as "ambitious." If you don't, well, hey, you're just a kid, for cryin' out loud!

My 13th summer was an endless vista of blue-sky, creek-water, warm-breeze days, punctuated by the sound of train whistles and ice cream truck bells; of Easter candy growing slowly stale in the bottom of a forgotten basket - half a marshmallow Peep and the black jellybeans nobody ever eats.

Summer was B.B. guns, slingshots, the impossibly azure feather of a blue jay - a slice of summer sky fell to earth and found beneath the flowering branches of a dogwood tree. It was night sidewalks still radiating midday heat at 11 o'clock and the faint echoes of "tag", "you're it!" and "all-ie all-ie in-free" reverberating through the sweltering summer air long after the last child had been hollered in for the night.

There were fish to be coaxed from the river, dogs to be chased and dogs that chased you; there were friends and enemies, girls who had cooties and girls who didn't ... the world murmured languorously with whispered promises of endless tomorrows.

My whole life was ahead of me, and at 13, I knew it.

At 13, I could see the wide world from horizon to horizon from atop Lookout Hill, yet still take notice of the smallest millipede darting beneath the loose gravel behind our garage. I wanted to see everything, smell everything, taste, hear and feel Every Single Thing.

There was still Magic in the world. It took up residence in the swirling spider web mists hovering over Highland Park creek just after sunup. It was there in the droning cicada buzz emanating from a thousand treetops. And most of all, it was captured in the miles of steel rail which cut through my neighborhood; twin ribbons of silver and rust.

The train tracks.

They crossed Grand Street three blocks north of my house, then curved away east and west, leading to far places I had read about but never seen.

I would stand on those tracks on a summer afternoon; New York, Spain, Istanbul to my left; Texas, Arizona and Mexico to my right. If I started walking those tracks, I might wind up anywhere.

From time to time, a train would rumble past, kicking up dust and shaking the earth like an iron tornado. And if it was moving slowly enough, sometimes my friend Annie - a freckle-faced redhead who most assuredly did not have cooties - and I would hop it; just run alongside, grab a ladder or open doorway, and pull ourselves, laughing and winded, into an empty boxcar. Dangerous?  Uh-huh.  Stupid? Oh, you bet. It didn't matter.

We'd ride for 10, maybe 15 minutes, until the train reached the edge of town and started putting on steam. Then we'd leap off and roll, usually getting pretty scuffed up in the bargain.

The caboose would slide past and we'd be standing there covered with dust, waving and grinning from ear to ear. Sometimes the guys in the caboose would smile back and wave, sometimes they'd wag their fingers and glower stern looks in our direction. They knew what we'd been up to, but a train doesn't stop if it doesn't absolutely have to.

More than once during that long summer, I sat with my briar-scratched legs dangling from a boxcar doorway, thinking that, this time, I might not jump, that instead I might just wave goodbye to Annie and see where the rails took me. Milan, Beijing, Morocco ... if I could just not  jump, by tomorrow I might be scorching my feet in the cinnamon sands of the Mojave or wandering through a noisy marketplace in Madrid.

Sure, some part of me, even at 13, knew that in reality those tracks probably terminated in a Milwaukee freight yard and that I would be found and returned to my worried parents long before I crossed the Michigan-Illinois border. But another, better part of me still resonated to the thrumming alchemy trapped in those rails; sensed their ability to transform my small, mundane city-boy life into something else, something bigger, taller, wider.

But in the end I always jumped.

And the train would roll on without me.

A few years later - when I was 16 or 17 - I spent a summer on the road, hitching around the country. I made it as far as Arizona before turning my face back toward home.

While traveling I worked on a chicken ranch, spent time in a Jesus freak commune, and was shot at twice. I sold fruit, helped a kid who looked exactly like Huck Finn with his paper route, and spent two weeks living with the woman who every Sunday played the third-largest pipe organ in the world at the Reorganized Latter Day Saints temple in Independence, Missouri.

I experienced more in that one summer than I ever had before or have since. They're good stories, or good memories at least. In my more grandiose moments, I think of those experiences as "adventures." And who knows, maybe they were.

But none compare with the adventures that lived in my head at age 13, in those few brief moments before I leapt from the open doorway of that boxcar.

Do you have a comment, question or railroad schedule for Mike Taylor? Send it to: mtaylor@midmich.net, or via snail mail to Mike Taylor, c/o Valley Media, Inc., PO Box 9, Jenison, MI 49429. 

I was watching some anti-war protesters on television a while back. It wasn't a huge group; four, maybe five-hundred people gathered around some anonymous government office building in downtown Seattle.

The protesters were relatively well behaved, though they did have some very unflattering things to say about Dubya. But there were no thrown rocks, fires, or even obscene gestures. At least none caught on camera.

Likewise, the police monitoring the scene were on their best behavior. No tear gas, rubber bullets or nightsticks were in evidence.

The whole thing seemed remarkably sedate for a protest. Boring, even. Frankly, I've seen episodes of "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood" with more action.

For me, it was just another reminder of how much things have changed in the past 30 years. Most folks who lived through the turbulent ‘60s and early ‘70s would likely say things have changed for the better. But after watching those austere students (most of them looked to be in their late teens or early 20s) ambling along with their professionally-printed placards, I'm not so sure.

I'm not saying protesting a war should be a fun thing, exactly. But it needn't be a study in ennui, either.

I know this first-hand, based upon my one - no, make that two - experiences in civil disobedience.

The first took place when I was only 10 years old, and my mother was there. She worked at the time as an operator for Ma Bell, back before they replaced all phone company employees with robots.

The Bell employees were on strike, and my mom dragged me along to keep her company on the picket lines. I'm guessing she wasn't expecting cops in riot gear to show up and start firing into the crowd, which they didn't. In fact, the police didn't show up at all, except to drive by and wave from time to time.

I don't remember much about the whole affair, other than everybody seemed to be having a good time and there were a lot of really good donuts at strike headquarters just around the corner. I ate too many of the chocolate ones and got sick. My mother was forced to abandon the picket lines to take me home.

All in all, a good time.

The second protest in which I took part was five years later, at Veteran's Park in downtown Grand Rapids. I was only 15 at the time, and the war in Vietnam was in full swing.

I was on summer vacation, and spent most of my days hanging out at the park with a group of kids who were four or five years older than I was. I'm not sure why, but we called ourselves the "Lost Souls," though none of us were really lost, and being for the most part white kids from the suburbs, we didn't have much soul.

Our unofficial "leader" was a guy named Andre, who - rumor had it - had once smoked grass. And inhaled.

We all fancied ourselves politically active hippy-types. Or, rather, some of the older guys did. I was just there for the girls, of which there were many. I was especially fond of "Tinker," a nubile young blonde who had sewn tiny bells on all her T-shirts. Whenever she moved, it sounded like Christmas. She was older and out of my league, but I was a prisoner of my own raging hormones.

So I went to the park every day, grew my hair long, and admired her from afar.

It was an especially hot day in August when our "protest" took place. For those unfamiliar with Veteran's Park, it's a one-block oasis of trees and well-tended grass in downtown G.R., with a large fountain located in its center.

At some point on this particular August afternoon, as temperatures soared into the 90s, one of the group - a red-haired kid named Sid, if memory serves - decided to take a quick dip in the fountain. There was no planning or forethought to it; it was just something to do to escape the miserable heat for a few minutes.

Soon he was joined by a second kid, then a third. They pulled off their shirts and tossed them, sopping wet, at the kids still sitting on the sidelines. One of the wet shirts hit Tinker - thwack! - right in the head.

Laughing, she jumped into the fountain to retaliate. Now, I thought Tinker looked pretty stunning in a dry T-shirt. The addition of water was more than my teenage libido had hitherto imagined. And it had imagined quite a lot.

I don't remember making a conscious decision to join my friends in the fountain, but when the cops arrived, there I was, soaked head to toe.

The police might have let us off with a warning had it not been for the fact that, by the time they arrived on the scene, several of our number were bathing - ahem - au naturel.

To make matters worse, a photographer and reporter from the Grand Rapids Press showed up at the same time as the cops. Recognizing his 15 minutes when he saw it, Andre told the reporter - at the top of his lungs - that we were swimming in the fountain to "protest Nixon's #$%!-ing war in Vietnam, man!"

This was news to me. I thought we were in the water because it was a hot day and Tinker looked really, really good in a wet T-shirt. But, being 15 and a junior member of the cast, I went along with the story, even as the cops hauled us away. The whole thing seemed like great fun.

Until my parents arrived at the police station.

I'll spare you the details of my chastisement. Suffice it to say my father's mood could - at times like this - swing dangerously close to the homicidal. Abbey Hoffman was never in more danger from the National Guard than I was from my old man at that moment.

But I lived through it, though I never saw Andre, Tinker or the rest of the Lost Souls again. They're probably all investment bankers and flight attendants by now. They probably have kids, maybe even grandkids. And I'll bet none of the old gang go skinny-dipping in public fountains any more.

But they sure knew how to throw a protest.

You can e-mail your questions, comments or opinions on dirty, filthy hippies to mtaylor@midmich.net.

A few weeks ago, I told you about the problem I've been having with squirrels.  Not all squirrels; just the squirrels that have decided to winter in my attic.

I was, if you will remember, feeling a little guilty about trying to capture them in a live trap for release in a nearby meadow.  I was afraid they wouldn't have time to build a nest or find a hollowed-out tree in which to live before the snow flew.

I'm a bit of a nerd when it comes to animal welfare, I'll be the first to admit.  Don't get me wrong; I've hunted, I eat meat, I have no compunctions about shooting Bambi.  I'm at the top of the food chain and I'm not going to apologize for that.

But I really hate to see any of nature's creatures inconvenienced, or heaven forbid, killed, for no reason.

In the past few weeks, those squirrels have given me a reason.

Now, don't flip out and call your maiden aunt who also happens to be the local PETA president; I'm not going to kill any squirrels.  Even squirrels that may at this point richly deserve it.

But I have to do something.

My little live trap trick worked once and once only.  I caught one of the little, attic-dwelling rodents in the middle of the night, took it out to the woods the next morning and introduced it to a life devoid of human-provided lodgings.  When I opened the trap, the squirrel shot away like ... well ... like the bats that used to live in my attic before the squirrels chased them out.

I stood watching from the roadside for a minute, just to make sure the little guy found his way safely into the trees.  Then I drove home.

Somehow, the squirrel got there before me.  Or one just like him.  He was sitting on the roof, gazing down at me disdainfully as I wheeled my pickup into the driveway.

That was two weeks ago and no squirrels have gone near my live trap since.  Apparently, they've all received the memo.

I could poison them.  I don't think there's a law against that, but maybe there is.  Even if there's not, I'm waaaayyyy to much of a softie to intentionally poison anything.  I even refuse to kill mice that way.

I have cats for that job.  The Lovely Mrs. Taylor's two Siamese mousers do not share my soft spot for all creatures great and small.  If they can kill it, they will kill it.  And they'll do it in as slow and heartless a manner as possible.

The cats enjoy killing things.  For those two, a little rodent torture followed by a decapitation is the recipe for a pleasant Sunday afternoon.

Suffice it to say we do not have a mouse problem at the Taylor home.  The neighborhood mice got that memo years ago.

Which is why I thought my squirrel problems might be drawing to a close last week, when one of the varmints decided the attic was too confining and made his way downstairs.

I was in my office upstairs when I heard the sound of things flying off the kitchen counter.  Usually, this indicates the cats are bored for lack of something to torture and kill, and have decided to chase each other around the house, just to keep in practice.

I went downstairs to pick up the mess and throw ineffectual curses at the cats, as I always do.

But they were both stretched out on the La-Z-Boy, looking like they'd been there a while.  Kipper, my beagle-mix mutt, was ensconced in his usual quarters on the sofa.  All three were gazing into the kitchen with polite interest at whatever might be making all the racket.

All three were too lazy to get off their furred butts and actually go into the kitchen to investigate further.

 "Let the hairless monkey do it," their eyes seemed to say.  So I did.

Or started to, rather.  I'd taken only two steps toward the kitchen when a small, rust-colored blur shot past my feet.  It slid behind the sofa, and then barreled across the living room and into the fireplace, then out again and back toward the kitchen.

The second time it passed, I saw it was a squirrel.  The cats and my dog (supposedly of a mighty hunting lineage) lifted their heads to watch the squirrel's progress, but that was it.  This was my fight, apparently.

Now, I hate to brag, but I am an expert bat catcher.  Every year, we get at least a half-dozen or so who find their way into the house, usually at night when we're watching television.  I have a big fishing net hanging in the garage specifically for dealing with this situation.

I can catch a bat, give it a good talking to, put it back outside and still have time to fix myself a sandwich before the commercial break ends.  I'm the Arnold Schwarzenegger of bat hunting.  The Batinator.

Anyway, I figured that if the net worked on winged rodents, it would probably serve to snag this wingless interloper as well.

Well, it turns out that squirrels are way faster than bats.  They can fit into spaces that at first glance appear much too small to permit rodent access.  They can climb walls, and no, I am not kidding.  They can leap 30 feet through the air.  And they can do more damage in five minutes than a bat could do in a lifetime.

It took about half-an-hour, but eventually - and with no help from the Taylor family's four-legged members - I managed to snag the squirrel.  By this time, he and I were both exhausted.  Even so, he fought heroically to wriggle his way out of the tangle of netting.

Fortunately, I was able to get him out the door before he did.  He ran off toward one of my backyard maples and I haven't seen him since.

But I've heard him.  Oh, yes, there in the attic, partying with all his buds, telling the story of how much fun he had while the "lumbering idiot" (as I suspect the squirrels call me when I'm out of earshot) chased him around the house.

I can swear I hear them in there laughing.  And I have a bad, bad feeling this isn't over yet.  As long as that squirrel is making a home in my attic, I won't stop trying to evict him.

So listen up, acorn breath, and heed the warning the bats know all too well: I'll be back.

I'm really hoping I get what I want this Christmas.  I usually get awesome stuff and have no complaints, but I never seem to get what I really want.  Last Christmas I scored a nice DVD player, a book or two, a few CDs, a shirt that actually fit and a lot of other cool stuff.  It was great.  But, as usual, I didn't get what I really, really want.

A toy robot.

It wouldn't have to be one of those ultra-advanced, super-cool "real" robots that vacuums floors and brings you martinis when you get home from work in the evening.  Just a regular toy robot that rolls along, beeps, bings, and sucks up C-cell batteries at the rate of about 30 per hour.

I've wanted a toy robot ever since third grade.

I didn't get one then.  I didn't get one when I was in 4th grade, either, or 5th, or 6th, or ever.

The problem was, my folks were broke.  Real broke.

These were the years after they laid my dad off at the furniture factory, but before he finally got up and running in the restaurant business.  These were the lean years, man.  The food stamp years.  The kind of years Dickens wrote novels about.

Times were tough, and toy robots were way down there on my parents' "must have" list; just above genuine Royal Wentworth china but below a six-week vacation in Paris for the entire family.  In short, the toy robot was not going to happen.

At least not for me.

Still, my folks did the best they could with five kids and a non-existent budget.  On Christmas morning, instead of a battery-powered, C-cell sucking robot that beeped and binged, I got a wind-up George Jetson.  A little stamped tin toy, made in China; the sort of thing you could buy at the dime store and get change back from your dollar.

I also got some socks, underwear and even a new pair of winter boots.  Stuff higher on my parents' "must have" list than was a toy robot.  But stuff that - to a 3rd-grader - doesn't even count as a gift.

I was a little disappointed, and it would have been understandable had I been bummed out big time.  But I wasn't.  I wasn't sad, or angry, or put out, or anything like that.

I hadn't gotten the robot, but we had a tree with homemade decorations, we had plenty of food on the table, and - not to wax too Walton's-esque - we had each other.  All in all, I felt pretty good about Santa, the Baby Jesus, and life in general.

"Poor" doesn't really mean a lot to a 3rd-grade kid.  At least it didn't to me.

But when school started up again the following week I got a primer on the subject.  As instructed before the start of Christmas vacation, we students brought our favorite Christmas presents to class the first day back.  Sort of a special "show and tell" thing.

I wasn't about to bring socks, so George Jetson rode along in my book bag that day.

When show and tell time came, all the kids ran to the cloakroom for their dolls and tanks and G.I. Joes and ... robots.  There were three of them in there.  The biggest and fanciest of the lot belonged to Chuck Scraab, a kid I both hated and feared; he and his "gang" used to beat me up on the way home from school at least three days a week.

On the days they were too busy to beat me up, they would instead follow me home making fun of my clothes, haircut, family, religion and parents' lack of money.

And now Chuck had ... my ... robot.  It was a thing of true beauty.  At least 24-inches tall, with lasers protruding from its black metal chest and eyes that blinked on and off.  There were rocket launchers built into its shoulders.  It would turn around - by itself! - if it bumped into a wall.

It was the coolest thing I'd ever seen, before or since.  And Chuck - Chuck! - was picking it up off the cloakroom floor and carrying it into the classroom.

I could hardly breathe.

Back at our desks, we all waved our hands in the air, impatient to be called upon to display our treasures to the rest of the class.  Chuck was chosen to go third.

He switched the robot on.  It beeped.  It binged.  Lights flashed.  The rocket launchers launched their rockets.  The Second Coming could not have impressed me more.

Chuck, robot in arms, walked past my desk on his way back to his own.  "Hey Taylor," he sneered, glancing at my little tin wind-up toy. "What's that piece of junk?"

I quietly slipped George Jetson back into my book bag and stopped raising my hand.

The other kids were called on one by one.  They showed their dolls and tanks and G.I. Joes.  Eventually, Mrs. Carlson called on me, even though my hand wasn't raised.

I thought about the cool toys the other kids had shown.  I thought about Chuck Scraab's robot, and about all the ridicule sure to be heaped on me after I'd demonstrated my cheap little tin George Jetson in front of the whole class.  And for the first time, I thought about being poor.

I thought about my raggedy clothes and the look on the cashier's face when my mother paid for our groceries with food stamps.  I thought about our family car, the rust-holes in the floorboards my dad had patched with cardboard and duct-tape.  I thought about the big, white-labeled can of Welfare peanut butter sitting at home in the kitchen cupboard.

For the first time in my life, I was ashamed of who I was, where I came from. Red-faced, I managed to squeak out, "I forgot to bring my toy, Mrs. Carlson."

I bawled my fool head off all the way home that day.  Thankfully and for once, Scraab and his gang were nowhere to be seen and didn't witness my humiliation.

About halfway home, I pitched George Jetson into a snow bank and kept on walking.

In bed that night, I got thinking about ol' George, lying out there, facedown in the cold.  I thought about my dad's tired, defeated face and his twice-weekly trips to the unemployment office; about my mom, struggling to find new ways to stretch a pound of hamburger to feed seven people; about our Christmas tree, decked out with my Aunt Madeline's hand-me-down lights and popcorn we'd strung ourselves, and I realized ... I was still ashamed.

But I wasn't ashamed of my family, of our poverty ... I wasn't ashamed of where I came from.  I was ashamed of myself.

My folks had scrimped to buy me that stupid tin toy, to buy the other cheap little trinkets that had been under the tree for my brothers and sisters Christmas morning.  They were doing the best they could for the children they loved, and I, I had let a jackass like Chuck Scraab make me turn my back on that.

It took me a long time to get to sleep that night.

The next day I searched for my windup George Jetson, from one end of that snow bank to the other.  I wish I could tell you I'd found him, took him home, and that all was then right with the world.  But I didn't find him.  I searched so long I wound up getting to school ten minutes late and earning my first-ever tardy slip.

In the years that followed, my dad opened first one restaurant, then another, then still others.  By my teen years, we were comfortable.

The presents at Christmastime were no longer cheap or embarrassing or made of tin.  They were more likely to come from a motorcycle dealership than a dime store.

But I never did get a toy robot.

And, you know, now that I think about it, to hell with the toy robot.

What I really want is a little, wind-up George Jetson.

You can e-mail Mike Taylor with your questions, comments or tin toy store Web site addresses at mtaylor@midmich.net.

It's comforting to know government officials the world over are every bit as clueless as those right here in the U.S. of A.

For every Really Stupid Idea an American politician comes up with, some foreign politician is having an equally questionable lapse in judgment.

This is news to no one, of course, except possibly the politicians themselves, who tend to consider their positions in (Washington, Lansing...take your pick) to be a validation of Manifest Destiny.

Over the years, politicians have birthed hundreds of idiotic ideas, most designed to increase government's control over the "little people" (you and me, not the extras in "The Wizard of Oz").

To be fair, politicians do frequently pass legislation to improve health care benefits, insurance benefits and retirement benefits ... for themselves. The rest of us are on our own. (If you think I'm kidding, check your own insurance and retirement plans against those of your congressperson.

If Social Security and Medicare flounder, you can bet your congressperson won't be forced to spend his golden years eating Ramen noodles and purchasing prescription drugs on-line from an illegal Web site in Sri Lanka.)

But I don't want to start ranting here. I really don't. I love politicians, if for no other reason than that they do take themselves so seriously.

They stride seriously through serious, marble halls, seriously going about the people's business with serious expressions on their faces, wearing serious blue suits and never once noticing the piece of toilet paper stuck to the sole of their serious wing-tip shoes.

Ya gotta love ‘em.

Anyway, my point here (I'm pretty sure there was one when I started this column) is that politicians in other countries are just as laughable as our own.

Take Yemen for example. Yemen is (please hold a minute while I Google this sucker) a nation that was until recently divided into North and South. In the 1960s, South Yemen adopted a Marxist philosophy, thereby giving the two nations something interesting to fight about for over 20 years, until 1990 when the two reunited as the Republic of Yemen.

Both sides shook hands, had a nice glass of Cabernet, and agreed they hated Americans even more than they hated each other.

Now facing a common enemy, they agreed to try not to kill each other for a while.

However, "for a while" turned out to be about 20 minutes. Despite now being, officially, one united country, various factions within Yemenese society cannot seem to get along.

I'm guessing it's a lot like the post Civil War North and South here in the States. It has been over 140 years since the American Civil War ended and - to some extent at least - hostilities still linger.

You can check this out for yourself by touring Tennessee while wearing a T-shirt bearing the legend: "Yankee booze beats Jack Daniels any day!"

Or you can drive your pickup through downtown Detroit while flying a Rebel flag from the antennae. (It helps if you have David Allen Coe blasting from the speakers.) Either way, you won't get a lot of smiles from the locals.

But my point is (wait a minute, let me check again ... ah, there it is!) politicians make dumb decisions. Even in Yemen.

To combat all the tribal violence in that country, one Yemenese official not too long ago decided to send in ... poets.

Yep, poets.

The official's strategy is to fund "roaming" by itinerant poets. The poets would, in essence, roam the countryside and "channel lawlessness into constructive thoughts."

I swear I'm not making this up.

Now, I've known a few poets* in my time, and mostly they're skinny guys who like to wear black, sit around pricey coffee shops and practice making tortured, angst-ridden expressions while sipping espresso and glancing furtively out the corner of their eye to see if anyone's paying any attention to them.**

What they don't like is riding a camel across miles of empty desert in search of cranky militants lobbing grenades at each other. But who knows, if the "funding" is sufficient, the Yemenese official may yet find a poet willing to put his plan into action.

I can see it now: Dust arises from the desert floor as yet another Russian-made RPG slams into a sand dune. From the other side of the dune, a guy wearing a khaki turban leaps to his feet and empties the clip of his Kalashnikov in the general direction of the RPG operator. He dives behind some rocks and waits.

In the ringing silence following this exchange, we hear the "thup thup thup" of an approaching camel. As the dust clears, we see the camel's rider, a spectrally thin young man dressed in black and carrying a small cup filled with espresso.

"Hold, noble sons of the desert," he calls. "And listen to my tale."

The RPG operator and the guy with the Kalashnikov peek out from behind their respective cover.

"For the nonce, set aside your hostilities and hearken to my voice," intones the camel rider.

First one, then the other of the combatants tentatively waves a white flag. From opposite directions, the two cautiously approach the poet and the poet's camel.

Good, good," says the poet. "Now, then, put down your weapons."

Neither do.

"Oh, uh ... well, then," says the poet, "hang onto your weapons, but try not to point them directly at me, OK guys?

"For I," adds the poet, regaining some of his composure, "have a story to tell."

Finally, the RPG operator - his finger planted firmly on the trigger - says, "Well ... I have been out here a long time with no cable TV. I guess I could use some entertainment."

"Me too," admits the guy holding the Kalashnikov - holding it directly on the poet, in fact. "Better be good."

The poet clears his throat, allows himself a delicate sip of espresso, and strikes a dramatic pose.

"Stop me if you've heard this one," he says. "There once was a young terrorist, um - I mean freedom fighter - from Nantucket, whose helmet was shaped like a bucket,"

The two combatants glance at each other, nod.

"He filled the bucket with sand, took a lemon in hand, and said to his camel, you -"

We hear the sudden "whoosh" of a rocket propelled grenade being fired, followed by a loud "bang" and the brief rattle of automatic weapons fire. Then ... silence.

When the dust settles, both the poet and his camel are gone. A lone espresso cup lies cracked and leaking on the desert floor.

"I'd heard that one," says the RPG operator.

"Me too," says the guy with the Kalashnikov.

Both combatants return to their respective sand dunes and commence with business as usual.

I don't know if this is how an actual, typical encounter will go, of course, but it seems to me willing poets will not be easy to find.

So, in an effort to improve American relations with Yemen, I volunteer Rod McKuen, the "goth" kid who used to date my daughter, and anybody with a poster of "Desiderada" hanging in their foyer.

* OK, one poet, a doofy goth kid my daughter dated in high school.

** Poets hate me, for some reason.

If you have a comment, question or poem that doesn't have the word "Nantucket" in it, send it to mtaylor@midmich.net.

WARNING: This week's column deals with subjects of an adult nature and is intended for mature audiences only.

 Is there any better way to get the attention of an underage reader? I don't think so.

Anyway, now that the kids are on board...

My wife - The Lovely Mrs. Taylor - is talking about making some changes in our marriage, and it's got me nervous. After years of mostly-blissful togetherness, she informed me last night she wants to experiment ... in the bedroom.

It seems she wants us to try - brace yourself - sleeping on different sides of the bed. Yes, yes, I know; it's shocking. I don't know what put the idea into her head, but there it is.

She doesn't want to do it all the time, at least not at first; just once, and not, mercifully, in our own bed. Early next month we're visiting my daughter and her husband in Detroit and we'll be staying at a hotel. It is there that Mrs. Taylor plans to put this "experiment" into action.

And like I said, it's got me nervous.

Since the first time Mrs. T and I shared a bed (details? none of your business!) I've slept on the left side. Originally, this was because the right side of the bed was nearer the door, and Jimmy, my stepson, was still a toddler who required frequent mommy attention in the middle of the night.

By the time Mrs. T and I moved into our first "our" house, the habit of my sleeping on the left had been firmly established. James was older, so there was no longer a definite reason for this, per se, it was just ... tradition. (Cue "Fiddler on the Roof" music.)

Then a few years ago, we went shopping for a new bed. Now, I hate the fact I have to sleep at all. As far as I'm concerned it's a huge waste of time and I resent giving up a third of my life to unconsciousness. But if I must do it, I intend to do it well.

We shopped all day for that bed. I tried dozens of different mattresses. When I say tried, I mean tried. Every mattress that seemed like even a remote possibility received several minutes of horizontal experimentation, both with and without pillows.

After thoroughly frustrating several salespersons at three different stores, I made my decision: the EZ-Snooze Marshmallow Posture Perfect 2000*. The EZ-Snooze Marshmallow Posture Perfect 2000 was, well, perfect. Not too hard, not too soft; it was one of those pillow-top affairs that cradle your body more perfectly than a nest cradles a clutch of robin's eggs.

It was also the single most expensive piece of furniture I had ever considered purchasing. When combined with the price of a headboard, footboard, frame and box spring, the total cost amounted to just slightly more than the annual gross national product of Switzerland. I've purchased cars for less.

It was worth it. That night, laying there (or lying, I can never remember which and don't really care) it was pure heaven.

In the years since, I've taken very good care of that EZ-Snooze Marshmallow Posture Perfect 2000. We turn it every couple of months, rotate it from end to end and side to side; we do everything the instruction manual says we should do. And after all this time, it's still as comfortable as the day the delivery people dropped it off.

At least I think it is. The Lovely Mrs. Taylor, however, has of late begun voicing complaints about the mattress, claiming it's not quite as cozy as it once was. Personally, I don't know what she's talking about. It feels fine to me. Better than fine, in fact. To me, that EZ-Snooze Marshmallow Posture Perfect 2000 feels great.

The problem first surfaced a week ago or so. I came home late from a long, boring meeting, and Mrs. T was curled up, snoring in a ladylike (for a lady water buffalo) fashion, on my side of the bed! At this point, I was faced with a difficult choice: be a selfish weenie and wake her, or be a nice guy and just sleep on her side of the bed.

I opted for selfish weenie.

She grumbled and groaned, but waggled three feet to the south, freeing up my side, which was now pre-warmed and even cozier than usual.

Next morning I asked her about it.

"Your side of the bed is softer," she said.

"It is not," I said.

"It is," she said.

I've had this sort of discussion with Mrs. T before and knew enough to drop it. She, however, had other ideas.

"If both sides are the same, why don't you sleep on my side?" she said.

"Because that's your side," I said, stating what I felt to be the obvious.

But with our pending trip to Detroit, Mrs. T seems determined to move ahead with this "experiment" of hers. The idea being, I suppose, that if we're in a different bed in a different the move will be easier for me.

It won't.

And if it is, what then? Do I relinquish the left side of the bed at home as well? Do I change my side of the table in the breakfast nook? For seven years, I've been looking at the Grandma Moses painting of "Harvest Time." Will I now have to look at the painting of "Mother's Day" that hangs on the wall, which until now has been behind me? Where will it end?

How long till I'm putting my pants on backwards and parting my hair on the right? Chaos! Anarchy! Pandemonium! It's only a matter of time.

Men, myself included, are poor, dumb creatures of habit. We don't like change. We don't like experiments. And we don't like the right side of the bed!

* Name made up since I don't really remember it exactly and even if I did I wouldn't want to give a free plug to a company that charges this much for a mattress.

Do you have a comment, suggestion or recommendation for sleeping aids for Mike Taylor? Send it to: mtaylor@midmich.net.

The Lovely Mrs. Taylor is a wonderful person. Really. But she can play me like a cheap violin and she knows it. Using a combination of smelling nice and being cute as a button, she can get me to do pretty much anything she wants me to.

I can live with that.

But now she's figured out a way to manipulate my actions by remote control. She does this by exploiting my one* weakness: women.

See, Mrs. T isn't the only woman who can push me around, she's just the woman who's best at it. The girl who works at the stinky bath soap shop is definitely second best.

I don't usually go to the stinky bath soap shop unless I'm coerced. Yesterday, I was coerced.

Several of the items on Mrs. Taylor's Christmas gift "suggestion"** list are available only at the bath shop, which does have a real name, by the way; something like Bath/Body/Bed ... something or other. I don't remember and I don't want to. No man does. It's not a place to which a man goes voluntarily.

He goes only because he has to.

Anyway, last night with list in hand - and my oldest son Jordan in tow for moral support - I passed through the perfume-scented doorway of the Bath/Body/Bed/Whatever shop.

This is not a place set up with men in mind; everything is chrome, glass and gossamer fabric, all highlighted by strategically placed pin-spots that make everything look ever so dramatic and exciting. It's the kind of place where - when we were little boys - our mothers would say, "Now, for God's sake don't touch anything!"

The shelves are lined with row after row of dramatically lit pastel-tinted bottles and delicate jars, all looking very breakable and very expensive. (Because they are!)

Behind the shelves are walls made of mirrored glass, as if we needed visual confirmation that we are, in fact, bulls in a china shop.

No sooner do we get inside than I am descended upon by an attractive brunette I'll call "Cheryl." I will call her that because that's what it said on her name tag.

"Hi," Cheryl bubbled. "Can I help you find anything?"

"Uh," I said, sounding particularly clever and scintillating, "this stuff." I handed Cheryl Mrs. T's list. It contained only two items: "Seaweed Kelp Exfoliating Peach Scrub"*** and "Lemon-Avocado Balm Rub Lotion Gloss."***

"Oh, these are excellent, great" Cheryl effused, sounding as if I'd just turned over the patent for cold fusion. "Your wife will love these!"

"Well, you know, it is her list," I said.

"Well, tell her for me she has excellent taste!" Cheryl said.

I could tell Cheryl really liked the word "excellent."

Jordan and I shambled after Cheryl as she led us through the maze of glossy display cases to the Seaweed Kelp Exfoliating Peach Scrub section. She pulled a bottle of sickly-green goo off the shelf - a "tester" - and opened it for my inspection.

"Look!" she said.

Not wanting to disappoint Cheryl, I looked.

I used to wonder what they used for that scene in "The Exorcist" - the one where Linda Blair barfs on the priest?

I wonder no longer.

It was definitely Seaweed Kelp Exfoliating Peach Scrub.

"Ah," I said to Cheryl. "Very nice. I'll take it."

"Excellent!" Cheryl said.

Then, almost as an afterthought, she added, "You know, if you get only two more items from the Seaweed Kelp Exfoliating Peach Scrub line, you get a fourth item free!"

I looked to my son for advice, but the poor kid's even more clueless than me.  Plus, he suffers from a similar weakness when it comes to cute girls, even girls who say "excellent" way too often.

"Go for it," he mumbled.

Cheryl beamed at Jordan, then at me.

"Say," she said, noticing the family resemblance, "You two must be brothers!"

From that point on Cheryl could have ordered me to assassinate the president of Bolivia and I would have said, "You bet!  What an excellent idea!"

I swear, if men were any dumber...

Anyway, by the time Cheryl was done with me, I had purchased the Seaweed Kelp Exfoliating Peach Scrub, the Seaweed Kelp Exfoliating Peach Scrub wash, the Seaweed Kelp Exfoliating Peach Scrub cologne, the Seaweed Kelp Exfoliating Peach Scrub body spray, the Lemon-Avocado Balm Rub Lotion Gloss, Lemon-Avocado Balm Rub Lotion Gloss scent, Lemon-Avocado Balm Rub Lotion Gloss cream, and - of course - the Lemon-Avocado Balm Rub Lotion Gloss pot pourri.

After Cheryl rang up and bagged my purchases, she - get this - sprayed my shopping bags with some Christmassy perfume stuff!

"It'll make your car smell excellent!" she said.

If Gary, who owns the hardware store I shop at, were to ever do this, I'd slug him. He wouldn't expect anything less.

Anyway, I still had about 20 bucks in my wallet, so Jordan and I went to a bar that specializes in cheap beer and spent the rest of the evening trying to figure out what had just happened.

I'll tell you what happened: Exactly what The Lovely Mrs. Taylor knew would happen, that's what.

Good thing she's cute as a button. Plus she smells nice. Kinda like peaches and avocados and lemons.

* OK, one of many.

** Meaning items that had better be under the tree Christmas morning.

*** Or something like this; they all sound the same to me.

You can contact Mike Taylor with your comments, complaints or Christmas shopping tips at mtaylor@midmich.net.

Before I get started with this column, let me say I'm profoundly happy just the way I am. I don't mind being a little bit fat, I don't mind having to wear contact lenses, and I don't mind getting old. What I mind is dying. I don't want to. Die, that is.

With that in mind, I've started watching what I eat, exercising every day and cutting back on the beer. Because, like most Americans, I've been convinced by my television that - if I eat nothing but Brussels sprouts, tofu and mineral water; if I get plenty of sleep (with the help of Sominex); if I take Flintstones vitamins; if I buy a Thigh Master and a Bowflex; if I sweat to the oldies; if I don't eat meat; if I eat nothing but meat; and if I vote Republican - I'll never die!

That's right, never!  I should probably mention that - again, according to my TV - in order to live forever, I'll also have to ask my doctor about Glaxo, Flixoid, Margowelle, Sebucid, Zipswazzle and Dammitol, whatever they are. (I'm guessing these are prescription drugs, but for all I know, they could be the names of some Hollywood starlet's adopted kids.)

Anyway, in an effort to live forever I'm now "power-walking" every day on my lunch hour.

Sure, I'd rather be over at the Chinese buffet, stuffing my face with coconut shrimp and moo goo gai pan, preferably followed by a short nap, but like I said, I need to avoid this whole "dying" thing.

I don't really mind the walking; it's peaceful, relaxing and not too strenuous. I'd like it better if I could get the guy from the Chinese place to follow me around with a plate of sweet and sour pork "just in case," but you can't have everything.

Besides, I don't remember reading anywhere that sweet and sour pork does anything to postpone death, and that's our goal here.

I've been at if for about a week now, and the main problem, near as I can figure, is that all the food that does (allegedly) keep death at bay tastes so bad that death starts looking better and better as you go along.

Brussels sprouts, for instance. They're part of that whole "dark, green, leafy" vegetables thing my doctor recommended last time I went in for a checkup. There's also spinach, collard greens and kale. Of the three, spinach is the only one I'm familiar with, thanks to Popeye. I have no idea what collard greens or kale are. I do know collard greens taste like lawn clippings and kale is vaguely reminiscent of the stuff I scrape off the insides of my aquarium. Beyond that, I couldn't tell you.

But if eating fish tank scrapings is what it takes to live forever, I'll do it. (They're not too bad with a little butter and salt, actually. Unfortunately, butter and salt - according to my doctor - are the twin kisses of death.)

But back to our main topic - which is either exercise, bad food, or death; I haven't decided yet - all this good health stuff is hard to take. Especially with no beer to wash it down.

I'll keep at it though. Because I'm afraid to die. It's as simple as that.

The fear of death seems to be hard-wired into our collective psyche, in much the same way as is our need to watch reruns of "Law & Order" and "Friends." It makes no sense, but it's almost impossible to overcome.

Most of the great philosophers and theologians throughout time have weighed in on the subject. Socrates thought the afterlife was either a paradise or an endless sleep. Either one of these sound OK to me, especially if I've been out really late the night before, but Socrates spent his whole life walking around in a bathrobe, so you have to ask yourself: "Is this really a guy whose opinion I can trust?"

Thomas Aquinas took a pretty straight forward Judeo Christian view of the afterlife: It was either a paradise, where the happy souls of True Believers are allowed to cavort with seraphim and cherubim (whatever they are - maybe more adopted Hollywood children), or a fiery hell; a place where the souls of people who watched "American Idol" are forced to throw loaded dice in endless games of "craps" with the devil, games in which the devil always wins.

Many of the Eastern religions put forth the notion of reincarnation, a theory which seems a bit odd to most Americans, with the possible exception of Shirley McClain, who was excellent in that "Steel Magnolias" movie, by the way, even though it was - let's be real - a major chick flick.

But again, back to our topic (which, it turns out, is "death" after all).

Reincarnation seems like a good idea to me, though a little investigation (which is all I'm willing to put into one of these columns) indicates I won't be coming back as an eagle, cougar or spotted Bolivian tree frog, as I had once hoped. People, for the most part, come back as people, apparently.

At any rate, my extensive research* of the topic** shows positively*** that nobody knows for sure what happens after we die.****

Regardless, it seems my best bet is to simply avoid death altogether. So I'll walk at lunch time. I'll ride my bicycle in the evening. I'll eat the spinach, the collard greens, and the aquarium scrapings. At least for a while.

Then I'll probably do what I always do: go back to eating burritos, drinking beer, and trying to not think so much about death.

* 10 minutes on the Internet

** Death, remember?

*** Or inconclusively - you decide

**** Unless they do - I'm too lazy to argue about it

Do you have a comment, question or after-life theory for Mike Taylor? Send it to: mtaylor@midmich.net.

It has come down to this at last: me vs. the squirrels. And the squirrels are winning. These are not your normal brown or red squirrels; they're black, insidious, Darth Vader-esque squirrels, deep in the councils of the Dark Side of The Force.

And I want them out of my house.

Now, before you hit the SPCA speed dial button, let me explain. I like squirrels. I really do. This despite the fact that squirrels are - when you get right down to it - nothing but slightly cuter versions of rats. Still, they frolic, they play, they sit in my maples and natter away as if they really have something important to share with the rest of the world, some bit of squirrel philosophy that - if we could but understand - would end war, stop hunger and ring in a golden age for all mankind.

Or maybe they're just upset with the blue jays for raiding the feeders in the back yard and are expressing their displeasure the only way they know how.  It's hard to tell with squirrels.

Either way, I like ‘em, okay? But every fall, they decide I should like them more. I shouldn't simply put food out for them, bits of apple, nuts, seeds; I also should provide them with a place to hole up through the cold, winter months.

I don't open the door for the little rodents, heaven knows, but they find their way into my 100-year-old house anyway, through cracks and missing bits of mortar, maybe. At first - in late summer - they remain quiet and stealthy, skittering cautiously through the spaces between the walls, working their way steadily toward the attic.

Then, after they've taken up residence for a while, they no longer bother to hide their passage from the outside to the inside. They make more noise than a frat house full of drunken freshmen.

I'm almost sure they're throwing parties! I woke last night to the sound of Alvin and the Chipmunks' version of "Louie Louie" coming from the attic. But when I opened the door they were gone.

The floor was littered with peanut shells and half-chewed acorns.

I could put up with it, I guess, if for no other reason than it's easier to live with ‘em than to do something about it. But The Lovely Mrs. Taylor - a noted xenophobe - has other ideas. She will not share her home with bugs, mice, snakes or bats. And she absolutely will not share it with what are - as I mentioned earlier - cute rats.

I volunteered to stand guard in the attic, armed only with a .22 and a box of cashews (for bait, and in case I get hungry). But Mrs. T has seen me use a gun before and according to the terms of my probation ... well ... that's a story for another time.

Instead, I've gotten hold of a "live trap," which I intend to bait with peanut butter or corn or whatever it is cute rats like to eat. What I'm going to do with a live squirrel - assuming I catch one - I have no idea. Take it out to the woods, I guess, and let it go.

I'm a little worried that a squirrel needs more time to prepare a nest - or shelter, or condo, or whatever it is they usually hole up in for the winter - than he (or she) will have in the scant weeks remaining before the snow flies.

But I can't let that be my problem.

As the kid in the movie "Red Dawn" said just before he shot the Russian soldier: "He doesn't live here!"

If my trap works, neither will the squirrels.

Got my first pair of contact lenses the other day. This represents Phase III of my long-term life plan, which I call "Get Old & Die." Phase I took place about five years ago, when I broke down and purchased my first pair of bifocals. A nightly walk instead of jogging represented Phase II. The rest of the plan shapes up like this:

Phase IV: Hair turns gray;

Phase V: Hair falls out; and

Phase VI: I die.
Understandably, I'm trying to hang onto my hair as long as possible, in order to forestall that final Phase.

At any rate, I'm now wearing contacts; one contact, to be precise, in my right eye. My left's going au naturel. The theory is, I'll read with the right eye and check out coeds jogging past my office window with the left.

I was a little apprehensive about the idea of using only one contact, but it turns out it does work! I can read! Without glasses! Better still, I can see the coeds jogging past. (Thank you, girls' cross country team.)

There have been some drawbacks, however. If you've never worn contacts, you may not fully appreciate the sacrifices involved. The first is, putting the lens in.

The nice lady at the optometrist's office helped me with my first try. Well, she didn't actually help me, but she did patiently talk me through it.

It was strange, touching the one part of my body I'd always been told not to touch. (Actually, one of two parts: The nuns at St. Isadore's Catholic School warned me against touching the other.)

But eventually, I got used to the idea of intentionally poking my eye with my forefinger. In truth, it wasn't as bad as I suspected it would be.

Taking the lens back out, on the other hand ... that, I am sure, is one of the recreational activities offered in Dante's seventh circle of Hell.

In an effort to remove the lens, and under the gentle guidance of the eye doctor's assistant, I dug, I groped, I yanked, I augured, I pinched, I pulled ... I did everything but go in there with blasting powder and a chainsaw.

And still the lens remained firmly attached to my eye, like a barnacle sucking the hull of an oil tanker.

Eventually - after what seemed hours (but was in truth, probably less than five minutes) - the lens did pop out. By this time, my eyeball bore a strong resemblance to the sun going down over Lake Michigan, but I didn't care; the lens (can I get a hallelujah!) was out.

"OK, that's good," the nice lady said. "Let's put it in again."
I could have cried; was crying, in fact. But I did as she instructed. Then I took the lens out again. Then put it back in, popped it out, in, out, in, out ... you get the idea.

By the time I left the optometrist's office, I was a contact lens insertion and removal machine!

So, that, at least, is no longer a problem.

The other downside to being able to see so well is ... being able to see so well. Things once fuzzy and vague now leap out at me with crystal clarity. No longer do I see the world through an impressionistic gauze of soft colors and shapes. Everything is so ... real. I see things too clearly, and that's not always a good thing.

For instance, it turns out I'm fat. Who knew? I always assumed I was just - as my mother used to say - "big boned." That may be true, but those bones are definitely covered in a formidable layer of blubber.

Also, I'm not married to Heather Graham. The Lovely Mrs. Taylor, it would seem, is a different blond woman altogether! Not whom I thought at all. She's still way too cute for me, so I'm not complaining, but you can imagine my shock at seeing her, as it were, for the first time.

Other things I've noticed with the help of my new contact lens: my vehicle is an old pickup truck, not a ‘Vette (gonna have to have a talk with the dealership about that one); I do not  live at the White House in Washington, D.C., but rather in a white house in Lakeview; I have ear hair; nose hair; and I am, possibly, losing some hair on my head.

So, all in all, the contact lens might be a good thing. Then again, it might not.

I'll let you know next time some coeds jog by out front.

Men do a lot of things for women we would never do otherwise. I'm not talking about the chivalrous stuff like opening a car door or throwing a jacket over a mud puddle (yeah, like THAT'S ever really happened). I'm talking the basics; things like bathing, using deodorant, shaving.

Most men I know would do none of those things if it weren't for women. If you think I'm wrong, try spending a week alone in a hunting cabin with four other guys. By the time the week is up, even the skunks will have vacated the forest.

I've only been hunting once in my life, and I'm lousy at it. But a few years ago some friends and I decided to take a little holiday at a hunting cabin owned by one of the guys' parents. It was a nice little cabin with running water, electricity, all the niceties of civilization.

We weren't planning to do any hunting. We were just going to play some cards, drink a few beers, hike through the woods, maybe go for a swim or do some fishing. You know. Guy stuff.

When we first drove down the twisting two-track to the cabin, we looked like your typical suburban office rats trying to get back to nature: new plaid L.L. Bean shirts, crisply-pressed Dockers, unscuffed Vibram-soled hiking boots. By the time we left a week later we resembled the backwoods extras from the cast of "Deliverance."

I'm not sure how it happened, but it wouldn't have, had there been women present.

To the best of my recollection, our de-evolution into the basic male archetype went a little like this:

Day One - We arrive at the cabin, the Explorer's 4-wheel-drive engaged for the first time ever. We unpack the truck, fill the cupboards with food (beef jerky, Lipton Cup-a-Soup, pickled sausages, beer - man food), and throw our sleeping bags onto the bunks. The cabin's a little musty from being closed up all winter, so we open a window to let the breeze in.

Day Two - We've all slept in our clothes. We hadn't intended to, but after a dinner of beer and pickled sausages, it seemed like a good idea. Or rather, undressing for bed seemed like too much bother.

Day Three - The cabin has running water, but so far, nobody's used it to bathe. Faces are scruffy. The L.L. Bean shirts remain untucked. It's a nice day, so we spend it fishing. That night we sit on the front porch and gut and fillet about a dozen beautiful walleye and a pail full of bluegill. We then fry ‘em and eat ‘em. We also eat more pickled sausages and drink more beer.

Day Four - It turns out that a diet of fish, pickled sausages and beer can lead to excessive amounts of - ahem - flatulence, a fact nobody is bothering to hide. We sound like a tuba section warming up. The lingering scent of fish guts on the front porch is almost a relief compared to what's going on inside the cabin.

Day Five - The smell inside the cabin no longer bothers us. At this point our olfactory nerves have shut down entirely, a strictly defensive move on their part.

Day Six - We're all cheating at cards. We were honest, reasonably moral guys six days ago, but all that's changed. If we had guns with us, things would be getting dangerous. We've almost run out of jerky and pickled sausages, but there's still plenty of beer and Lipton Cup-a-Soup. Nobody's eating the Cup-a-Soup, though, because it involves boiling water, which is too much like cooking. Some of the guys are starting to lose their grasp of the English language; we communicate through a series of grunts and hand gestures. None of the hand gestures is polite.

Day Seven - The beer is gone, so we know it's time to head home. When we stop at a store in town, other customers give us a wide berth. The store's owner is in a hurry to get us checked out and on our way. As we leave, he reaches for a can of Lysol.

Back home, my wife greets me at the front door. Not with a hug and kiss, but with a plastic garbage bag for my L.L. Bean shirt and Dockers.  She seals the bag tightly before heading to the laundry room.

Upstairs I see myself in the bathroom mirror. It ain't pretty. The backwoods extras from "Deliverance" looked better.

The water from the shower feels strange and unfamiliar. My pores open up, gratefully accepting the chance to dislodge some of the dirt, oil and God knows what else that has accumulated there.

When I come downstairs, I am again a civilized suburbanite, smelling of Old Spice and shampoo.

But I know I will always carry with me the memory of my descent into savagery, of my week in the woods with nothing but guys for company. And I can't help wondering ... what would have happened had the pickled sausages run out before the week was over? What if we hadn't been able to catch any fish?

Cannibalism is such an ugly word.

So let's hear it for women! I don't know what we'd do without them. And I'm not anxious to find out.

According to author Thomas Wolfe, you can't go home again.  What he meant (if I remember my Lit. 101 class) is that home changes while we're away.  Our past is a moving target; one not necessarily moving in the same direction we are.

In short, things change.

I've always more or less accepted this as a truism, until recently.  When I attempted, for the first time ever, to "go home."

But maybe I'd better back up a ways, to 1973, when this tale really begins.

I was in high school, a sophomore, maybe, or a junior; I don't really remember and I'm too lazy to do the math.  High school was, for me, mostly an annoyance that took up time I would rather have spent on ... well, almost anything.  I skipped a lot, and on those rare occasions I was in class, I paid little attention to what was going on there.

I was not a model student.

My parents were worried about my future (mostly, that my future would involve me living with them well into my thirties).  For my part, I was not worried in the least.  I had a goal.  I had ambition.  I had my life planned out, baby!  With nothing left to chance.

I was going to be a rock star.

Yup.  A rock star.  I knew three chords, had a red electric guitar and long hair, and I was in a band.  I didn't know it at the time, of course, but I was in a terrible band.  Even our name was terrible: Batwipe and the Dead Fish (don't ask).  None of the other guys in the band knew we were terrible, either.  Amazingly, nobody had the heart to tell us!  Not our folks, not our friends ... nobody.  Where's that jerky guy from "American Idol" when you really need him?

So, not knowing we stank like week-old road kill, we got together every day after school and rehearsed.  And rehearsed some more.  Then some more.  The same 13 songs, over and over and over, up in my bedroom or out in the garage, weather permitting, for over two years!

And I wondered why my parents sometimes acted crazy.

We did manage to land a few gigs during the years we were together.  All but one of these were "non-paying" jobs, but we didn't mind; every public appearance brought us one step closer to rock stardom.

Eventually, the band dissolved and we all went our separate ways.  The years passed, as they have a way of doing, and I came to realize that I was not going to be a rock star after all.

The decades slipped by and those years of practice, of scrounging for gigs, arguing with band-mates about girls, lyrics and chord changes ... all those things shuffled like grains of sand through time's great sifter, burnishing to a golden-hued patina as they fell.

Until at last what once were experiences became nothing more than memories, images of another life captured in time's immutable amber. The middle-aged man who looks back at me each morning from the bathroom mirror and the 16-year-old hippie he once was could no longer talk to each other, not really.  The two were as disparate as Baby New Year and Father Time.

Then I got an e-mail from Dale, who in the long, long ago, had been the band's bass player.  I hadn't seen or talked with Dale in about 30 years, so there was plenty to catch up on.  Who got married, divorced, had kids, grandkids ... we got all that out of the way in the first three e-mails.  Then, we started talking about the "glory days," when the future still glimmered and glowed with promise and our lives were laid out in front of us like a virgin field before the plow.

About 50 e-mails later, we decided to track down Terry and Bob, the other two guys from the band.  A week after that, we'd made plans to meet up for the 34^th reunion of the band's first rehearsal (Jan. 9).

I was a little nervous, mostly because of Thomas Wolfe's admonition (Can't go home, remember?).   I mean, 30-odd years is a lot of blacktop under the tires.  I knew I wasn't the same goofy kid who had dreamed of opening for The Edgar Winter Group all those years ago; surely the other guys had changed at least as much as me.

I realized I had planned dinner with a bunch of strangers.

To make matters worse, we had agreed to bring our wives and/or significant others.  I had doomed not only myself to an uncomfortable evening with a bunch of strangers, but The Lovely Mrs. Taylor as well.

The date finally arrived and with some palpable trepidation on my part, Mrs. T and I drove to Applebee's, as planned.  She did her best to assure me it would be a fun evening, but I had my doubts.

The hostess showed us to our table, where Terry and Dale were already seated.  Or rather, two old guys who looked vaguely like Terry and Dale.  I'm guessing they were thinking the same thing about me.  Bob arrived a few minutes later, bereft of hair!

It was uncomfortable for about two minutes as we floundered around, trying to figure out whom these people - once upon a time our best friends - were now.  Then slowly, like a morning mist burning off the surface of a quiet lake, we began to realize, all of us, that we hadn't really changed so much after all.

We were older, fatter, wrinklier, balder ... sure ... but all that was the outside.  Inside, we weren't really much different from the four scruffy kids who had spent endless hours annoying the neighbors from the confines of my parents' garage.

Together, at least for that one evening, we occupied a space out of time, where summers don't end, hair never goes gray and good friends refuse to drop out of each others' lives.

We stayed at the restaurant much later than I had planned.  None of us wanted to see the evening end.  Nevertheless, it did.

Reluctantly, we shook hands, made promises to get together again soon, and drove our separate cars away from 1973 and back into the present, where waited mortgages, parent-teacher conferences, jobs, responsibilities, and the cold, hard truth that we are not, and never will be, rock stars.

But for that one night, at least, we did get to go home again.

Take that, Thomas Wolfe.

Addendum: In the weeks since our dinner, we've made good on our promise to get together again.  We're meeting for lunch in February and - may the gods have mercy on our listeners' ears - we're even playing one last, final gig together; not surprisingly a "non-paid" gig, late this month, for the guys at the Veteran's Facility in Grand Rapids.  Still, who knows, if it goes well we may yet wind up being rock stars!  We even have a Web site (www.gbrothers.com/bw_homepage.html) so we're halfway there.

You can e-mail Mike Taylor with your questions, comments, or reasons why old guys shouldn't be playing rock and roll, to: mtaylor@midmich.net.  Or you can reach him via snail mail at Mike Taylor, c/o Valley Media, Inc., PO Box 9, Jenison, MI 49429

Get your motor running

Head out on the highway

Looking for adventure

And whatever comes our way

"Born to be Wild" - Steppenwolf

Take my license

And all that jive

I can't drive

Fifty-five

"I Can't Drive 55" - Sammy Hagar

Mister State Trooper

Please don't stop me

Please don't stop me

"State Trooper" - Bruce Springsteen

While driving to Rockford the other day from my home in Lakeview - a tiny village an hour north of G.R. - I saw a cop; a state trooper. He'd pulled over some poor schmuck about a mile down the road and had his bubble lights and flashers going.

I nonchalantly slowed from Warp 6 to 55 mph in about three seconds, not quite believing my eyes.

In ten years of driving between my hometown and Rockford, this was the first time I'd seen a cop along my usual route.

This isn't because the police aren't doing their job, but because my usual route is generally bereft of any traffic more stimulating than Amish buggies and combines.

There just aren't enough cars out there to keep an officer busy writing tickets all day. They prefer hunting grounds with more plentiful game, I think.

Which is why I was so surprised to see the trooper writing out the ticket. But there he was, scribbling away in his little book. As I drove past (at an even 54 mph), I saw the driver of the ticketed car; he looked even more surprised than I did.

Now, I have nothing but respect for members of our law enforcement community; they do a tough, often dangerous job I wouldn't tackle for any money, even if they do get to carry handguns, which is pretty cool.

Also, I'm all in favor of traffic laws, speed limits, no-passing zones and all the other stuff that keeps us from killing each other in large numbers on a daily basis.

But I have to admit, I've always considered that stretch of back road between Rockford and home to be a sort of no-man's land; something out of a Mad Max movie. It's a lawless wasteland governed by the post-apocalyptic rule of the road: the fastest survive. Or if not the fastest, then those with the biggest airbag-equipped pickups and noisiest deer whistles.

I don't know what it is about that stretch of pavement (I'm not going to say exactly which stretch, in case any police officers happen upon this column), but there's definitely something about it that makes my right foot heavy.

Maybe it's the wide-open spaces; nothing but farm land and scrub for miles. On a clear day, you can see, well, forever. There's obviously no other traffic out there, or darned little. Other than the occasional possum with suicidal tendencies, there's nothing as far as the eye can see to run into.

Or maybe the problem is that parts of the drive are incredibly hilly. If you get going fast enough it's a lot like a roller coaster, only without the pasty-faced kid in the seat behind you yelling to his mother that he's going to throw up.

Now, I drive what is considered by most rational people to be the "official" speed limit - six and one-half miles an hour over the posted "suggested" limit - almost all the time. But when I reach that stretch of back road something happens.

It's not as if I intend to speed. I don't! But those long miles start slipping gently past as the road unwinds beneath me; the stereo buzzes with public radio announcers trying to get me to make a pledge, and the next thing I know I hear a loud boom as I accelerate past Mach One.

My truck's not exactly a nitro-burning, fuel-injected, hemi-boasting powerhouse, so by the time I finally get going that fast, it almost seems a shame to slow it back down.

But I do.

Eventually.

When I come to the four-way stop about half-way home, I dial it back - sometimes - to as slow as 35.

That seems kind of fast for what, technically, is supposed to be a full stop, I know. But this four-way is in the middle of nowhere. Worse, it's on the outskirts, the suburbs of nowhere. Nowhere seems like somewhere compared to the of this four-way stop.

When I first started driving this route 10 years ago, I would come to a more-or-less full stop. After a month or so, I began to feel a little foolish, seeing as how visibility at this particular intersection is roughly three light-years in every direction and if there were a reason to stop, I would see it coming miles away.

Even the Amish don't bother to come to a full stop there.

So I started slowing down at that intersection, but not stopping. And in time, slowing down a bit less.

These days when approaching the intersection, I usually just roll down the window and stick my left arm out to generate a little wind resistance.

Safety is my watchword.

I know, I know, no police officer would mistake this "one-armed wind resistance" technique as a "full and complete" stop, no matter how much I whined.

Until this morning, that hasn't been a problem, as my little back-road route has been a cop-free zone. But now I know they're out there, waiting. Lurking. Ready to enforce the law at the first available opportunity.

And - thanks to this column - they now know to be on the lookout for me; a 6-foot-4 female of Eskimo extraction driving a fire-engine red Mini Cooper. (Note to editor: please insert a file photo of an Eskimo woman in place of my usual column mugshot. Thanks.)

To contact Mike Taylor with your questions, comments, or one of the many reasons why he should be banned from driving forever, e-mail mtaylor@midmich.net or write via snail mail to: Mike Taylor, c/o Valley Media, Inc., PO Box 9, Jenison, MI 49429.