Right or Wrong: Let us give thanks

First appeared on November 25, 2015
in The Lebanon Reporter

Let us give thanks. Thanks to the Pilgrims with their drab frock coats and blunderbusses. Thanks to the natives who showed this desperate band of immigrants the tricks they would need to survive a brutal winter. Things like how to grow corn and track deer and the best places to find cheap gas and cigarettes.

And let us not forget the turkeys. A bird so good we eat him only once a year. Poor souls, who will, by the millions, give themselves up for us to celebrate the legendary triumphs of our ancestors. So how can it be that all this pomp and circumstance could be based on one big lie?
How could it be everything you were taught as kid is wrong? Historical truths that seemed the cornerstones of a nation suddenly dismissed. George Washington cutting down his cherry tree and Teddy Roosevelt inventing the Teddy Bear or the fact Donald Trump’s hair is real.

And so historians, who apparently have nothing better to do than sit around trying to prove other historians wrong, tell us the Pilgrims, forever the stalwarts of purity and righteousness, were not all devout Christians. They weren’t all nice to the natives and, at least when it came to their wardrobe, they didn’t all favor fifty different shades of gray.

They spoke of a government of, for and by the people and yet early on theirs was dominated by a religious elite. There were no cranberries, sweet potatoes or pumpkin pie at the first Thanksgiving, which leads most 7 year olds to wonder why you just can’t order a pizza.

For you this means it’s all been for nothing. Thirty plus years of bad football and choking down dry turkey as your Uncle Randy recounts the free throws he made to win that sectional game, all this over the bass beat of your father complaining about gas prices. And for what? For what historians would have us believe is a fake holiday?

So we’re left to decide for ourselves what we accept as truth and what we question. And at 5-6, can we really believe in the Indiana Hoosiers? A team that could easily boast wins over ranked opponents in Michigan, Iowa and Ohio State and yet had dropped 6 straight before downing Maryland last week.

A team one win away from strapping on their bowling shoes. And there, at the bottom of the schedule, a familiar foe awaits. Instead of finding two teams limping into an Oaken Bucket game hoping only to finish their seasons on a high note, a victory Saturday sends Indiana to their first bowl since George W. Bush was the Commander in Chief of Strategery. Meanwhile, Purdue arrives at 2-9 trying to jab a needle the size of a javelin into Kevin Wilson’s balloon.

These are not uncharted waters for the Hoosiers. This is not a New World. Still, can up really be up and down truly down? Was the Revolutionary War really fought against the British? Or could it have been three-foot tall aliens who just happened to fight using conventional European military tactics? These are the questions we’re forced to ask ourselves when historians tell us its entirely possible Lincoln never eclipsed 5’11, using blocks of wood in his boots instead to compensate for rabid insecurities.

So on this Thanksgiving, get out there and be the master of your own destiny. Believe in the unlikely, embrace the magic of your childhood or accept the so called conventional wisdom. Either way, it’s still a free country and nobody can dispute that. In the meantime just be careful believing in the Indiana Hoosiers because, revisionist history or not, they’ve let us down one too many times before.


© 2015 Eric Walker Williams

As the Cubs tempt fate, fans brace for the inevitable

First appeared on August 18, 2015
in The Lebanon Reporter

With Donald Trump still leading in the polls, Hillary forwarding Top Secret emails and the Cubs winners in ten of their last eleven; its official, the end of the world is upon us.

Turns out that uncle, the one with the ‘Licensed Sasquatch Hunter’ bumper sticker, was right all along. The world will end before Washington starts making sense. For years he took you out to the woods and showed you how to hunt and fish, claiming when the end comes, only the strong, those who can build fires, find fresh meat and tie a barrel hitch, will survive.

By firelight he told you how the moon landing was filmed in a California basement. A two-bedroom ranch owned by the Night Manager of a Denny’s in the San Fernando Valley. “Surprisingly huge basement for a Ranch.”

He swore the Soviets killed Elvis because there was a hidden capitalistic agenda in his lyrics and that cheeseburgers in American schools are green because the FDA was injecting them with human growth hormones. “Reagan was tired of losing to East Germany in the Olympics.”

But that was thirty years ago and not only are you older now, you are also wiser. You know the world most likely isn’t going to end anytime soon. You are also smart enough to realize the Cubs can’t win the World Series this year because this is the year of the sheep, which is basically a goat, and we all know how that’s worked out so far.

Still, the Northsiders are stirring the hearts and minds of this great nation and that’s the part the rest of baseball loves most. The rest of baseball, lounging in their monogramed Turkish bathrobes, sipping Arnold Palmer’s while leafing through dog-eared copies of an ‘Idiots Guide to Dealing with Post-season Success.’

And there they linger, in only the way they can, pretending to read but all the while waiting. Waiting with baited breath for that priceless moment the Cubs fall apart, crushing the hearts of millions, the eternally downtrodden, yet again. A train wreck indeed.

Meaningful baseball has become an oxymoron for Cubs fans, a mythical figure most have spent the better part of a lifetime searching for. There have been glimpses. Grainy images of a foul ball being prematurely snatched up from the stands and a black cat scurrying across an infield. For generations it has loomed on the horizon, just close enough to tease, yet somehow always gone by September.

It’s been over 100 years since a championship last came to the Northside. That magical run was witnessed by then U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt. You know Teddy, the Rough Rider who charged up San Juan Hill, a feat so lasting he remains the answer to the most popular question posed to every Ranger stationed at Mount Rushmore. Exhausted families, sunblock pasted faces, herded together in khaki shorts and loud print shirts, cajoling their restless young ones to take in the powerful artistry that is Rushmore, all the while wondering aloud, “Who’s the one next to Jefferson again?”

But despite the Cubs’ newfound fortunes, don’t expect to find the four horsemen galloping down your street anytime soon, it is after all only the third week of August. There is still plenty of time for a full-blown collapse. One so monumental it triggers widespread earthquakes. Cataclysmic tremors that move mountains and cause rocks to fall down upon those hiding amongst them.

And while you’re thinking we’re in trouble either way, just remember the Cardinals are so far ahead of the rest of the National League they could take a couple weeks off and still wake up in first place. This means, Armageddon or not, the Cubs are once again destined to leave fans feeling undeniably inadequate.

© 2015 Eric Walker Williams