I had a novel idea.
A friend of mine is on a vacation to Europe. One of her first stops was Dublin, in part to celebrate Bloomsday, June 16. The single day in 1904 on which James Joyce’s set Ulysses.
All 265,222 words of it.
Of course, it took Joyce about 7 years to write the damn thing. Still, it made me wonder – but not like in Stairway to Heaven.
Reflecting back – but not like Diana Ross or the algae-fied pool in DC – I wondered if I picked one day on which to set a novel, what day that would be.
Novel 1: DuPage, Scotland
On June 13, Best Fest Buddy Tom and I made our umpteenth trip to Chicago Scots Scottish Festival & Highland Games – the 40th edition, in Wheaton. Wheaton was dry until the mid 1980s.
Along the way to the festival we saw firefighter paramedics attending to a motorcycle vs auto accident in front of an amusement park.
A half hour or so later, we passed a gas station where the pumps had been leveled like broken robots by a tornado the day before. But the awning over the pumps remained up, missing just a couple pieces of siding.
The parking deck for the DuPage County government building and adjacent fairgrounds was so crowded we wound up on the roof. Had we known, we would have parked here the two prior years the games were in Wheaton.
See, the roof provided a godlike view of the heavy games below. You haven’t seen a caber toss until you’ve seen it from above.
It was a bit windy up there, too. That’s always a challenge when donning a kilt in proper Scots fashion.
Ambling about the grounds we saw the usual sites and stuff for sale. OK. Maybe we hadn’t seen a first responder kilt before, replete with reflective trim. Where and when would a firefighter wear a kilt like this anyway?
There was a camel-colored camo kilt, too. Maybe that one’s for someone who is way too into AI to wear at home when chatting with a chatbot.
Scots actor David Tennant is in everything these days. At the fest he appeared as a Japanese doll style pillow with really big eyes. Is there nothing that guy won’t play?
Walking around I noticed pipers from all over the country practicing in any available space. At one point I thought I heard sheep bleating. Nah. It was pipers in a barn.
Some skinny old guy brought his unruly Rottweiler. Then again, based on the way the dog was behaving, maybe the beast decided to bring the old man out for the afternoon. Why or why can’t people leave their pets at home?
To complete his Highlander look, Tom brought along some cigars. He dropped one, startled by the Rottweiler that was either barking at pitbull or unhappy with the jacket his owner was trying on.
A good Samaritan returned the stogie and struck up a conversation about smokes with Tom.
My pulmonary system disallows me from taking part in such discussions.
On the way home we stopped at one of our locals in our festive garb. I took a picture of my reflection in the entry window. AI made a version and removed my facial features. Sweet.
We sampled wine next to a woman who told us about her bariatric surgery. Is this Modern Maturity-style flirting?
Anyway, this meandering seemed like it could make for my take on Ulysses, my mundane yet meaningful suburban novel.
Alas, I’m at just 500 words for that day.
Novel 2: Step On Wolves
So maybe I could set the novel on June 14, when Irish Buddy Shay (IBS) and I drove to Chicago to see playwright Mia Chung’s Catch As Catch Can, the final show for Stepppenwolf’s 50th season.
I admit. While having sliders and beverages before the show, Shay and I had to look up what the phrase “catch as catch can” means. We made do with what the internet told us.
Two old guys in a balcony at the theater. How muppety! But not.
Both of us are at the point where we’re happy to have a non-health related reason to travel more than 10 miles from where we live. Plus, even with Chicago traffic, the Steppenwolf is pretty easy for us to reach and handy for capped parking.
The play marks Gary Cole’s first time back onstage in Chicago in more than 25 years. Cole and fellow ensemble members Audrey Francis and Tim Hopper each play dual roles – one male and one female role, one at least in their 60s, the other at least in their 30s.
In one dizzying scene, set at a pre-Christmas party, the actors all switch back and forth at breakneck speed. The fine cast is up to the task.
The press kit says Catch as Catch Can is a kitchen sink drama that asks what happens when we refuse to play the roles we’re prescribed. It’s also not to be confused with Ketchikan, a small town in Alaska. Actually, it’s mostly set in a living room in a working class home somewhere in New England.
One of the families has Irish roots. The other, Italian. The Italian son is estranged from his Korean wife. The Irish son returns home for the holidays claiming to be involved with a Korean woman but in love with the Italian daughter who was one of his childhood friends.
It’s funny in a good Norman Lear sitcom way until just past the halfway mark, then it takes a turn into a drama involving suicide, mental health care and aging.
I may not be as literate as I’d like to be, and sometimes I am too literal.
For instance, while the play first opened in 2018 and is set in contemporary times, the old characters make a joke about Father Mulcahy from MASH and Catholicism in Korea. While I do know some folks who still watch MASH reruns, that was about the only pop culture reference to Korea and its relationship to the United States. How old are the old folk characters in this play, anyway?
Splitting what little hair I have, I would have expected a reference to BTS, the K-pop act that first hit the US charts in 2017. Even if the younger characters are in their 40s, they would know about them from friends’ kids.
I missed it if there was a reference to the dictator in North Korea. Or to Kia or Hyundai.
How my mind works: I wound up checking when the Oscar-winning Parasite came out (2019) and when Squid Game hit Netflix (2021).
One thing the play is pointing out is how insular and stereotyped views of other cultures can be. What I wrote above probably helps make that case.
As this essay by May Treuhaft-Ali puts it, the play proposes “that multiple generations live in each of our bodies, and that we perform race and gender the way we do because of the way our ancestors live in us. With this play, Mia invites us to reflect on the histories we carry, the identities we enact, and the ancestors we bring to life through our actions.”
Or something like that. All those generations inside my body.could explain my weight gain.
Past that, if these were working class families, I was impressed that the three parental characters all seemed to be retired.
See, their grown kids keep talking about wanting to have babies or about having kids on the way. That clouded my math for figuring out how old everybody was supposed to be.
Oh. One line of the play’s dialogue turned out to be an adage I hadn’t heard before: Koreans are the Irish of Asia. It made me hungry for colcannon and kimchi, a true intermingling of cabbage and culture.
Yes, they had snacks afterward for the opening night crowd. Alas, no ethnic dishes tied to the play, but tasty nonetheless.
Heading back to the parking lot, I stopped to take a sunset photo of Steppenwolf’s marquee. The sign and the street reflected off the glass front of the building.
It was a fitting image for a trip to a theater where the troupe is reflecting back on its first half-century with a play about identity and how we all play multiple roles in our own lives.
Sometimes metaphors are that obvious.
But my reflection on the play gives me less than 800 words on which to base my day-in-the-life novel. Plus, I took a nap that afternoon, which would make it even tougher to top Joyce’s word count.
Novel 3: Minding Matters
Ok. Back in the day I learned about the rule of threes for writing. Thus, another novel day could involve one of my adventures in babysitting.
I took Tom’s youngest grandson to see the Mandalorian and Grogu movie for his birthday.
I even bought him a Star Wars t-shirt for the occasion, which he gladly wore. I wore a Star Wars t-shirt, too. Cute or cringe? You decide.
The boy’s brother and sister weren’t interested in going to the movie. Just us. He seemed quite engaged. And he asked a lot of questions during it, which I thought was adorable. Even if I didn’t have answers for a good many of them, which may have disappointed him.
I didn’t burden his burgeoning brain with the question I have with many a space epic or space alien adventure: Why do so many of the nonhumans all have human features? Spoiler alert: In Disclosure Day, the alien looks like a prototype of the Intergalactic Basketball Association. The alien might also be naked. Who or what would travel through space – and probably time – without some sort of garment?
Back to the Star Wars spinoff experience. If anything, this might be the inspiration for the kid to write his own novel, or make his own YouTube movie that becomes a blockbuster hit to make. His
Flashback to May 2. BFB Tom was working a wine fest, so he asked if I would take his grandkids to their monthly Home Depot craft project, then to their swim lessons.
Pushing my luck, in a Mrs. Doubtfire mood, I decided the night before that we would make a full day of it. I even bought frozen French toast sticks at Aldi to feed them when I picked them up to head for the craft class.
When I arrived with breakfast, they conned me into taking one of their cousins along. But not before I made sure it was okay with the boy’s parents.
So gray-bearded me became springtime Santa.
First stop was a car show being set up in a park where there was going to be a pre-Cinco de Mayo festival.
The kids told me their grandmother told them Cinco isn’t really a holiday in Mexico, that it’s really more of a white people thing. Being Irish, I could relate, per what SPD can become.
At Home Depot, the kids seemed more interested in eating popcorn than in making and painting a small Mother’s Day keepsake box. (A couple days later they told Tom I suck at making crafts. That’s true. Everyone’s a critic. At least they didn’t post a Yelp review.)
After Home Depot we made a brief stop at a car show being set up in a park that’s on the way to the rec center pool.
Since the cousin wasn’t enrolled in swim class, he played Roblox or Minecraft or a combination thereof on his phone during the session. I wandered on my phone, too.
Afterward, I heard reports from the swim teachers about how each of the three did that day. HIPAA law disallows me from relaying those notes to you – just to Tom.
Going Joycean novel, next was a trip to the nearby woods by the to check on forts made these kids fortnights ago, twinges of nostalgia from the under-11 set; woods scare me, particularly ones with a shed holding fossils, animal bones and possibly clues that teens or unfortunate homeless suburbanites have been hanging out there; but we cleared any litter we saw, because that’s how we rolled.
We rolled into the library, too, to join the summer reading program, scavenge a hunt, play with the computers, prepare pretend plastic food meals and maybe even read.
Off to Bricks and Minfigs we went. Each kid had a budget for how much of my money they could spend on LEGO stuff. Tom’s granddaughter bequeathed her allotment to her cousin.
The visit was in advance of May the 4th, the Star Wars nerd holiday. Sure enough, a grown man bought a good-sized Yoda someone else had built.
LEGO makes kids hungry, so we stopped at a nearby taqueria. We’ve been before. The staff there has been impressed by how well the kids behave. Am I a good influence or do they just want me to spend more money on them?
Either way, they ate and played in peace. For the most part. The youngest grandkid and his cuz pranked me. They said they left my car door open. They hadn’t. Hilarity ensued.
I got back at them during our Kohl’s cash spending spree. I let the youngest pick out his birthday gift. After much deliberation and some horseplay, he settled for some marked-down battling robots.
His sister browbeat me into getting her a hoodie. I forgot to mention it was a crisp day, yet they all dressed as if it were July. Plus, she didn’t get anything at the LEGO store.
Lucky for me that on top of a Kohl’s cash coupon, I had Kohl’s bucks to spend in my account. After Kohl’s math, the total for the toy and the top was just $7 or so. Tom’s granddaughter seemed either impressed or that I was a cheapskate.
In the car, panic ensued. The cousin couldn’t find his phone/ Did he leave it in the store? Haha. I had it in my pocket. PRANK you very much.
Not content to call it a day, we returned to the park. Cool weather kept the crowd down for the pre-Cinco de Mayo gathering. The kids played with a disc and wound up chatting it up with some cops who were keeping watch from a UTV.
The boys posed for selfies with the friendly officers. I hoped that the police would never have to take photos of this trio for other reasons. The kids also asked the cops if Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo was their soccer GOAT.
All that talk made them hungry for overpriced ice cream truck ice cream. Treats consumed, we watched the aforementioned car show cars leave the grounds before leaving ourselves.
Our final stop was back at Tom’s house where the three could see their mom and play with a neighbor kid from two doors down.
Drama ensued. The next door neighbor was talking with police. Maybe my being a sort-of reporter inspired the kids to inquire. They learned the neighbor’s German shepherd had bitten somebody.
Again, the boys asked the cops to choose between Messi and Ronaldo.
I sat in my car, keeping an eye on the proceedings, listening to the radio, waiting for the Kentucky Derby to start.
More drama ensued. Tom’s youngest and the neighbor kid had been riding their bikes up and down the blocks. They came peeling around a corner, with Tom’s youngest grandson precariously pulling along another bike.
I asked them what the hell was going on. These wannabe Hardy Boys claimed that the bike they found was Tom’s granddaughter’s bike that had been pilfered weeks before.
I asked for evidence, which they provided.
I may have said something about it not being a good idea to take back the bike per what that could have led to depending on where the bike was and who may or may not have taken it.
The less I say about their mom during this – or in general – the better.
I told Tom’s granddaughter to put the bike in the garage or back yard to prevent a further theft. She sort of listened. I groused about them leaving their stuff all over the front lawn all the freaking time. No wonder things get lost or stolen.
Frosty me decided it was time to take the three and their cousin back to their grandma’s house.
It was dinner time. The derby had been delayed because a spooked horse threw its jockey on the way to the starting gate.
That seemed apt for my grumpy mood.
It didn’t help that the mid-grandkid smuggled a box of cereal into my Camry. He used it to fill a plastic dispenser of some sort he found among all the crap their mom keeps at Tom’s house.
That mess was addressed. On the way to grandma’s we reviewed our long day. The consensus: it was a good day but for when I turned crabby at the end of it. (Nobody mentioned that I sucked at crafts.)
I offered to buy dinner, but they weren’t hungry. They insisted 6-7 is still a thing. They were doing their part to keep it going.
I drove home. Exhausted, I fell asleep watching basketball or some PBS murder mystery, Or both.
Yeah, you can pack a lot in a day. In this case, almost 1,400 words. That’s not even close to my novel goal of matching the verbosity of Joyce’s masterpiece. Still, it does provide a lot for people to reenact 100 years from now.
Me, I am not sure if this would be the start of a kid-based Ulysses more like one of the endless phone conversations my mom would have with my aunt.
In fact, all told, I’m approaching 3,000 words for this entire piece. It would take 88.4 more meanderings like this to equal Joyce. That’s a lot of purposeful dilly, dally dawdling.
As the kids might say, clock it. Or not. Who knows what anything means anymore?
