My friends and I would have called these “flood pants” or “farmer pants.” For anybody who came of age between 1970 and 1990,  men’s pants were supposed to “break” just below the shin and lie on top of the shoe. You weren’t supposed to feel your pant leg fluttering about your ankles when you walked. And, when you sat, you didn’t have to worry about your pant leg riding up to your calf.

My mother always hemmed my pants. She taught us boys how to do it too. If you didn’t hem your pants, you looked like a clown, your pants-ends bunched on top of your shoe. This has changed. It seems nobody hems pants anymore. As a result, most of us men are wearing pants that are way too long.  It does look clownish, I must admit. But, for most of us, it’s an inevitable necessity for the following reasons:

1) Nobody knows how to hem pants anymore. Why? Times have changed. Most young men and women are growing up without having had any domestic training. I once dated a woman who didn’t know that when you iron clothes you need to dampen them to press out the wrinkles.

2) If you do know how to hem pants, you don’t have time to do it. I’m not good at hemming, have no patience for it, and find it maddeningly laborious.

3) If you can find a professional to do it, it costs too much–as much as half the price of the pants themselves. Most pants don’t last long enough to warrant that kind of investment. At bottom, it’s an expenditure too dear for these hard times.

I don’t know if or when pants hems will rise again. I can recall when, as a boy, my pants legs were sometimes too short, a fact I would not notice until my peers made fun of me. My humiliation could not have been greater had I been naked. Too-short trousers still carry that stigma. As for the opposite, the too-long trousers, it seems we’ve learned to live with them. About once a week, I tell myself that my pants are too long–I carry too much fabric on my shoes. I don’t like it and I suspect that, years from now, I will look back and cringe at what we now consider appropriate.

I know, I know, it’s just fashion, a bullying arbitrary notion of what is and isn’t cool. Very likely, some day men will be wearing body stockings made of recycled tissue paper and heaven forbid your tissue isn’t black or translucent or ornamented with crushed fire-flies. But, for now, consider this: if you were to get all of your pants hemmed to the classically appropriate length tomorrow, people might take notice but no one would make fun of you.

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My groceries parked, I went upstairs to see Jill. She was on the internet, reading about Hartford, CT, which we’re going to visit next week. I checked my own email. Ten minutes later, we both went downstairs to put away the groceries.

The first thing I noticed was that the cardboard carrier for the roasted chicken container was lying on the floor. I knew this was trouble. Frieda, our basset hound, is notorious (in our household) for stealing food from tables and countertops. I thought I’d put the chicken in a safe place, six inches from the counter’s edge. Frieda isn’t a big dog, but she’s long and, where food is concerned, she’s willing to stretch. Jill and I have been amazed at her ability to get things she really wants from hard-to-reach places.

This time, we were doubly amazed. Within the span of ten minutes, she had not only sneaked the chicken — quietly — from the countertop, but then carried it into the pantry, where she wouldn’t be heard. And then she ate the entire chicken. She left nothing behind, not even a nib of bone. Ten minutes.

Jill and I howled in protest and moaned our regret and frustration. Frieda just stared up at us expectantly, wagging her tail. She was still hungry. Since we had NOT caught her in the act, we couldn’t scold or punish her. But we were pissed off, me especially, as I had to make dinner.

What made it all the more painful for us was the fact that Frieda doesn’t exactly enjoy eating—it’s not like she takes her time or savors the flavor. She just gobbles down whatever she can as fast as she can. This is a dog that will eat her own turds on occasion. Now, let me confess that we have had Frieda on a diet. She was getting heavy, which can cause basset hounds back problems. But, the truth is, she was just as ravenous when she wasn’t dieting as she is now.

Basset hounds are all nose. They want nothing but food, it seems, and will spend most of their waking hours sniffing it out and then go to any lengths to get at it. The only good thing about this trait, at least in Frieda’s case, is that she’ll eat anything –really, anything–you give her. This comes in handy when she needs medicine. Hand her a pill, any kind of pill, and she’ll eat it without hesitation. If you want to see an example of her appetite, check out this video:what will Frieda eat?

After Frieda ate the whole chicken, we worried that she might have some problems digesting her treat. She had a perceptible bulge in her belly but she slept well and, apparently, she’s not going to suffer either indigestion or constipation. She possesses exceptional genes, we have decided–survivor genes. She’s a dog that could live through strive and famine and nuclear war because she will not be thwarted. In her way, Frieda is a super dog.

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Every time I went in, she’d grin and say, “Oh, best customer!” Then she’d ask me how I was. Then: “Your wife….?” And she’d nod knowingly, her eyebrows raised in expectation of the good news I never delivered. She seemed desperately hopeful that Jill and I would have a baby. For a woman of her generation (she’s about 75), children–the family–are everything. She would tell me about her grown children and her grandchildren. I’d ooo! and ah! at her snapshots.

Jill and I chose not to have children for many reasons. We don’t regret that decision. Still, I didn’t want to disappoint Mrs. Park, and so I didn’t tell her that Jill and I would never have a baby, that we’ve put our energies and interests elsewhere. It just seemed easier not to get into it. As a result, I’m afraid that Mrs. Park pitied me, thinking, Poor man! What is life without children?

Mrs. Park was in very good health, wiry and quick-moving. I doubt that she has fallen ill or worse. Seven years ago, somebody robbed her in the shop, then shoved her to the floor. She was lucky she broke no bones. I thought for sure she’d retire after that. But she came back the next week, angry at the robber and determined to stay put. On his way out, the robber had wrenched the door off its hinges. It was never the same after that. Each time I walked into the shop, I noticed how the door wouldn’t shut right and I wondered if Mrs. Park thought of the robber when she struggled to shut the now-stubborn door.

Last September, she announced that her daughter and husband had invited her to stay with them in Colorado for a month. She had visited her children many times (she has a son in California) and, on several occasions, had closed the store for as long as two weeks. But she had never cleared out the store, as she was doing this time. I wondered if her daughter had asked her to do this, if this was a scheme to disengage her mother from her beloved business. I imagined that, once Mrs. Park was in Colorado, her daughter would convince her to stay–for the sake of the grandchildren. How could grandma resist?

Mrs. Park betrayed no suspicions of her own. She promised that she’d return on Oct. 14 to resume business. But October came and went and the store remained closed. I drove by every week for two months and then, finally, I admitted to myself that my Korean friend was not returning. Her daughter’s plan had worked. No doubt, Mrs. Park has a nice room in her daughter’s house–and her daughter has a 24/7 baby-sitter, not to mention an energetic seamstress and homemaker. Am I being uncharitable?

I must confess, I worried about Mrs. Park. How long could she have kept on in that little shop? Her two grandchildren will keep her plenty busy. She’ll cook for the family and treat them to traditional delights and everyone’s life will be richer for it. And, at last, Mrs. Park will have better things to worry about than whether or not her customers have children of their own.

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• Take OFF Your Belt! (2)

This year, I showed up at the court house door dutifully at 8:25 A.M. on the appointed day. Nobody was waiting to enter at the security scanning station. As I stepped up, the Sheriff’s deputy on duty—a short woman of middle age—issued commands like a drill sergeant: “Move up. Put your bags on the conveyor. Remove all metal objects, coins, possessions. Place them on the conveyor.”

I complied.

I’m a compliant guy. Most of us are. We’ve spent too much time in the TSA lines. We’ve become cowlike in our submission, shuffling through the cordoned chutes of security.

“Take off your belt!” the deputy said loudly. Maybe I wasn’t moving fast enough for her. But nobody stood behind or ahead of me. I had already put my bags on the conveyor. “Take OFF your belt!” Now she was shouting.

I said, “Take it easy.”

“Don’t YOU tell me to take it EASY!” she snapped. “Take OFF your belt!”

It was as if she were telling an armed-and-dangerous perp to Get OUT of the CAR.

Confused and a little frightened, I did as she demanded. Then I put my belt on the scanner’s conveyor, where I thought she wanted it.

“DON’T put your belt there!” she shouted. “I didn’t TELL you to put it there!” She snatched up my belt and handed it back to me. By this time I had taken off my coat because I thought she wanted my coat on the conveyor belt.

“I didn’t TELL you to take OFF your coat!” she shouted. ” Put your coat ON!”

I must have stared at her as I would have stared at an oncoming train. Mind you, on a normal day, I’d still be in bed, dreaming of running barefoot through a field of sunflowers.

“Put your coat ON!” she shouted. “PUT your coat ON!”

I did as she commanded. Then, in frustration and disgust, I dropped my belt into the plastic box she held.

“That’s IT!” she announced. “He’s got an ATTITUDE!” Her fellow officer behind the deck just stared. Maybe everybody was frightened of the deputy. Now the deputy turned to me: “You’re not coming in this way. YOU go around to Saint Paul Street!”

“What?” I stuttered.

“Around to SAINT Paul STREET!” she shouted.

I recalled the time that Mr. Altman kicked me out of fourth grade music class because I was singing our “tra-la-la” chorus derisively. He was a big man, a slob and a bully. He insulted us routinely by giving us the most insipid, infantile songs to sing. I loathed him. “WHO was that?” he demanded after silencing us. “WHO was singing like THAT?” Then his rodent eyes met mine. I felt my face burning. Did a cruel smile tug at Mr. Altman’s chapped lips? “You, Tanner, OUT!”

The deputy heaped my bags and my belt into my open hands and commanded: “Around the block, to the SAINT PAUL entrance!”

Amazed and befuddled, I walked past another officer who shook his head in disbelief (he looked frightened too), I pushed through the huge court house doors, then nearly tripped on the big step down. Another man was walking in. He must have seen my shaken expression. “You all right?” he asked with concern. I couldn’t look at him. I only nodded and waved an okay, my head resounding with a Kafkaesque chorus of tra la las.

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• The Lady Vanishes! (2)

The pup was so frightened, it peed as Jill cornered it. A couple of passersby helped us get the leash around its neck. The dog was growling and cowering. Then I did the Dog Whisperer routine and took control, acting with full confidence and pretending that nothing was wrong and we were going to walk. The pup yelped but complied. When we got to Jill’s CRV (a little 4-wheel drive), Jill made some room in the back, pushing the tree aside. The pup looked interested. I scooped up the dog and deposited her inside.

We drove to the SPCA. But they wouldn’t take our stray. She was too wild. Apparently the pup had been tied in someone’s back yard, maybe being readied for breeding or worse. In any case, it was thoroughly unsocialized and frightened of people. “Oh, she’s so fearful!” the SPCA vet said. She sent us to Animal Control. When I reached over to reassure the pup, she growled and shrank away. Never mind that she had accepted my comfort earlier.

Jill named the dog Sulky because the dog seemed inconsolable. She wouldn’t eat anything we offered her. Sulky calmed a bit as we drove. But, then, before we arrived at Animal Control, in downtown Baltimore’s back bay, she got car sick. She heaved and heaved. She had probably never been in a car. Animal Control’s parking lot was packed on this Saturday afternoon. A place like that is both disheartening and encouraging—we witnessed adoptions and drop-offs. One guy brought a big, beautiful all-white American bull that had been tied to a fence for three days. “I got fed up watching it sitting out there and waiting for somebody to take care of it,” the good neighbor said.

A kind Animal Control employee came out and talked to Sulky for a few minutes. “Don’t growl,” she scolded the dog. Sulky did not take kindly to another attempted leashing. But eventually she yielded and was led away. We bid her a sad farewell.

Before the day’s end, we dumped our tree at the recycling center, where it will be ground into mulch. You’ve never smelled as lovely a smell as ground pine trees. Those piles of trees got me thinking about dogs. We have two at home. And two cats. All of them shelter animals. Too many dogs and cats in the world with too few homes. But, I guess, you already knew that.

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If you came of age before, say, 1985, you should find this astonishing. Remember the grocery store of your mother’s day? For those of you too young to remember, Muzak was the only offering in public places. It was all instrumental copies of the hits, usually done in syrupy violin orchestrations. If there was guitar, it was cleaned up and toned down, the palest version of the original, sounding like granddad’s idea of “sexy.” Oh man, it made for painful listening! Whenever I found myself within earshot of Muzak, I felt tormented and I think I better understood how much pain the mentally impaired suffer when they hear hateful voices in their heads.

Muzak, and its imitators, served corporate America and illustrated a disdain for popular taste. Truly, it was insulting to hear what they did to the music. It’s analogous to a corporation taking over the National Parks and killing, then stuffing all of the animals and doing it badly, and then setting up those badly stuffed animals in the forest for the tourists to view—and claiming that this is THE wildlife experience.

No doubt, other youngsters like me vowed to change Muzak when they got old enough to make a difference. The result is that, for years, I’ve been hearing — in grocery and department stores — music I like. Real music performed by the original artists. But not until today had I heard Ozzy Osbourne. So the world changes. That old heavy metal has got some rust on it, so why not? Soon, we’ll be hearing post-thrash hip-hop with all the f**ks and c**ts bleeped out.

If you’re lucky, getting older is about staying flexible. I’m a lot more relaxed than I was at twenty,  mainly because I have a better take on what can and cannot go wrong and, really, most things aren’t as bad they may seem at first glance. This week, for example, I returned to work after the holiday break only to discover that my bosses had removed all of the garbage pails from our offices. Cut backs. The absence of trash pails saves the janitorial staff from having to open all of those offices to retrieve all of that garbage. My secretary said, “Just think of the exercise you’ll get walking to the trash can down the hall!”

Those of us who remember the luxury of having a trash pail right there beside our desks – we will be replaced, in time, by those who never had the luxury. That’s how the world changes. All those people who thought Muzak was a great idea, well, they’re dead and gone, probably. And maybe right now, some kid is walking through a grocery store and squinting up in distaste at the music he hears spilling from the ceiling speaker: “What is that heavy metal garbage?” he’s asking. “Man, you must be joking!”

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Taking down the holiday ornaments kills that festive mood with a sudden finality. The now-unadorned rooms are stark reminders of new business in the same old world and it seems we’ll have to wait awhile until more fun comes around. Jill has asked me to clear the junk off of the treadmill in our basement. I’m resolved to take the vitamin supplements my nutritionist brother sent me. And maybe this year I’ll learn how to operate my smart phone fully.

Holiday story 1: Shortly before Christmas, we passed a sidewalk Santa clanging his bell and shouting holiday greetings in front of Sam’s club in one of Baltimore’s suburbs. Jill, a counselor at Healthcare for the Homeless, said, “That’d be a good job for one of my clients.” Then she did a double-take and said: “That IS one of my clients!” She’d been trying to track him down for weeks. (The homeless are hard to track down, as you can imagine.) She talked with him for ten minutes. And he promised to come in for his next appointment.

Holiday story 2: Jill and I went to Philadelphia for a couple of days after Christmas. The minute we drove into town, I wanted a Philly pizza. Cold-calling restaurants from internet listings on your smart phone is like playing Russian roulette. Still, I phoned the likeliest candidate and ordered a large pepperoni to go. When we arrived at the pizza place, it was a hole in the wall, popular for slices, not full pies. We soon learned why: they offered only extra large pizzas. One quarter of the pie filled a large pizza box. The server stacked one quarter pie on top of the other, two per box, and we walked away with the equivalent of four pizzas. So we drove around and looked for somebody who could use a meal. We found three unemployed men sitting on a bench in front of an old brick building that could have been an employment agency. I rolled down the window and called, “You guys want some pizza?” Who doesn’t want pizza?

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Baltimore got 21 inches. As we are a Southern city, we don’t cotton to snow. It freaks us out. Everybody crowds the grocery stores the night before a storm, as if preparing for a siege (or the apocalypse?). Surprisingly, the forecasters got it right this time. Snow kept coming. Our power went out for 16 hours. We were about to camp in front of the fireplace when it returned finally. Living without power, we decided, is most inconvenient. Not that we have grounds for complaint. Jill, who works for Healthcare for the Homeless, visited one of her clients this week. He just got a tiny one-bedroom apartment after having lived on the street for years. She brought him a Christmas tree. He gave her a photo of the underpass he used to call home. Driving to work this morning, Jill saw plenty of others in the street. She started bawling. There’s only so much you can do, and then what?

Thick ice remains on some streets and sidewalks. Baltimoreans have staked out their curbside parking with lawn furniture. I waited till the last minute to shovel. The guy I usually pay to help me checked himself into rehab three weeks ago. It’s his second try at kicking crack. Though determined to go straight, he admits that it’s a long shot if he can’t get away from Baltimore. “Drugs is everywhere,” he says. That’s no lie: about one in ten Baltimoreans is “drug dependent,” according to a recent study. So that’s our wish for the new year, that he can get enough help to get away.

Baltimore is not the “Wire.” Really. But, sure, you can find all of that here. Our mayor—convicted for petty theft of a few gift cards recently—has been the best mayoral advocate for the homeless in many years. She may hold on to her office yet. Holding on seems to be this year’s theme. If Obama can pass healthcare reform, I’m thinking, we could see the beginning of something, not the end.

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“You mean if I’m not home to get the package the first time, I don’t get the package?” she asked.

“We only deliver once,” he said. “You have to pick it up after that.”

“This is new, isn’t it?” she asked. “Didn’t the post office used to do follow-up deliveries?”

“No, ma’am. Never.”

We know differently. But the clerk wasn’t lying, we decided; he just didn’t know any better. He’s probably a youngster and may have worked at the USPS for only a brief time. As far as he knows, it’s always been this way. It makes sense in a world of diminishing returns. Which reminds me that most people don’t know what they’re missing if they’ve never known how things were before. When my writing students hesitate to cut their sprawling drafts and worry that their readers will feel the loss, I remind them that their readers won’t know because all they’ll have is what you give them.

That’s why I never missed Santa in my childhood: my parents did not recognize Santa — didn’t even mention him — because our Southern Baptist church thought him idolatrous. We had gifts and candy and even a tree, but no Jolly Saint Nick. I sometimes wonder how my life would have been different had I the opportunity to believe in the bearded fat man. You tell me.

Re: holiday music: if I hear “Santa Baby” one more time, I might go postal. Though not a bad song by any means, it irritates as much as “All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth” (sung with a lisp).

While shopping in TJ Max today—it looks fairly healthy out there, by the way—I passed an older woman standing next to her adult daughter, who seemed intent upon her cell phone. The older woman glanced to the brightly-lit ceiling as if to check for rain, then said to no one in particular: “It’s hot everywhere, isn’t it?”

Yesterday while Jill and I were decorating for the holidays, we heard crunching behind us. It was Frieda, our basset hound, eating a fallen glass ornament. We stopped her, of course. A while later, Sophie, our orange tabby, padded by proudly with a mouse in her mouth. I said, “Jill, Sophie’s got a mouse.” Jill was sweeping up pine needles. She said absently, “Sophie’s so cute.” I said, “Jill, Sophie’s got a mouse, will you help me?” Then Jill reacted appropriately: she yelped. We ran circles around Sophie and cornered her under the dining room table. She dropped the mouse. Jill said, “Oh, it’s dead.” Then the dogs lumbered in, drawn to the hubbub, which to them always signals the possibility of hand-outs. Momentarily distracted, Sophie turned her head to the dogs. Then the mouse dashed away. I said, “The mouse is seldom dead, Jill. They play dead. then wait to make their escape—which we have just witnessed.” Jill said, “It looked plenty dead to me.”

Just so you know: it takes a cat a while to kill a mouse. If you can get the mouse from the cat within the first ten minutes, you can toss it—fairly unharmed–outdoors.

We attempted to direct the cats in the direction of the mouse’s escape but, well, you’re familiar with the expression, It’s like herding cats? So we gave up and everyone went about his or her business. Then, two hours later, while cleaning up, I lifted a package that was on a dining room chair and there it was: the gray mouse. Apparently he had been hunkered there all this time. He leaped away. And I leaped back. Then I called for the cats. They came running but only because they thought it was meal time. I tried to explain to them that it was indeed meal time but not the meal they expected. But no matter how I attempted to direct and guide them, they could or would not pick up the scent. So the mouse got away.

Jill and I decided to let nature (such as it is in our household) to take its course. Every six months or so a mouse gets into our old house. They’re in the walls or on the porch. We saw one in our garden this summer. But after they get in, they don’t stay long. Usually one of the cats gets them and we find the broken body in the morning. They never eat the mouse, though I’m sure Frieda would, if given the chance. We expect to find the dead mouse any day now, but maybe the mouse will get lucky and find its way out. We’ll call that our holiday miracle.

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Driving one of Pennsylvania’s two-lane blacktops, we saw a startling sight. It was a black bear as big as a Harley Davidson, lying on the shoulder of the road. The bear was dead. It had fallen from the roof of a four-wheeler, where (already dead) it had been strapped. The hunters were trying to retrieve it, though I don’t know how they were going to get it back on top of the truck. The thing must have weighed 500 pounds.

The state game commission estimates that there are about 30-40 bears for every 100 square miles of forest in Pennsylvania and Maryland. If you haven’t seen a bear lately, you should know this: they’re covered with long, silky black hair and have the heft of an overstuffed couch. They look so different from the animals we usually see (deer, squirrel, dog), it seems outlandish that anyone would shoot one. Pennsylvanians have been shooting them forever, apparently, even when they were scarce. We in Maryland kill them too. By the way, you’re not supposed to say “killed.” Say “harvested” instead. Hunters pride themselves on eating the meat.

I eat meat too. Not bear meat. But just about anything else. I ate elk once. And let me say this right here: I don’t mind hunters shooting deer. There are too many frigging deer in the world. Of course, there would be fewer deer if there were more bear. See how that works? Basically, the way to hunt bear is to scare it out of hiding. Then take aim. Since a bear is a big target and isn’t spry like a deer, I don’t see how this is very sportsman-like. From the accounts I’ve read, the hunters mostly spend their time tramping through the woods making noise. Bears are cagey and secretive. That’s all they have to work with. If you’ve read Faulkner’s “The Bear,” you get the idea.

As I am not a hunter and have never hunted, I can’t speak for the atavistic thrill of shooting large animals. I do know that when our backyard was over-run with rats some years ago, I would have given anything to have taken a rifle to their cavalier cavorting—they were so brazen, they might as well have been sunbathing back there. I had fantasies of picking them off with an M-16.
But that’s different than going into the forest and spooking a big animal out of hiding and shooting it. Think of Bigfoot. He just wants to eat his berries and dream of finding a mate. Lest you get overly worried, bear-hunting season lasts only three days. In any case,  I don’t get it. The only live animal encounter Jill and I had last week was with Frieda and PJ, our dogs, who always travel with us to Pennsylvania.

We kept the dogs on the backseat of the car. When we stopped (at one of many antique malls), I barricaded them from getting to the front seat—because we had a bag of food on the floor in the front. When we return to the car, Frieda, our basset hound, had managed to get into the front seat, even though the barricade had not been moved and nothing (e.g., water bottles) had been knocked over. It was as if she had levitated. We found her with her head in our food bag. In the fifteen minutes we’d been gone, she ate half a pumpkin pie and half a loaf of bread. We laughed because that’s about all you can do when it comes to Frieda, though, as I carried her to the back seat, I might have muttered, “I’m gonna shoot this dog.”

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