Weekly View » Words with Woods

Good Vibes

CJ Woods III — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 05:08:12 +0000

My friend told me that she had responded to a notification about a house concert that was going to feature one of the musicians that we follow. Paula Nicewanger, co-owner of this publication, said that she included me in the invitation. On Monday, June 29th, we went to a Clear Vibes House Concert at Kati Taylor’s house to hear guitarist Charlie Ballantine and bassist Quinn Sternberg.
The temperature was 4,000 degrees when Paula picked me up; we brought camp chairs and a cooler, for we did not know if the concert was going to be indoors or outside. Paula made it plain that if the concert was outside, we would not be staying. As we neared the address, we saw that many cars were parked in front of the house. We climbed inside with our coolers and chairs and found ourselves in an intimate and inviting environment.
Guests were seated on a screened-in front porch, in chairs and on couches in the living room as well as in a room off the kitchen. In front of the living room fireplace, two great speakers posed stork-like over a bass that lay on the floor; close by, was a chair that was fronted by a microphone. A dog cruised about the space, casually — albeit carefully — stepping over the bass in its passage. Paula and I snagged two chairs at stage right, with a perfect sightline on “The Man Who Plays Guitar,” (The Weekly View, April 3, 2025).
I first saw Charlie Ballantine in January 2016, when I attended a “Sweet Thursday” event at the Coal Yard Coffee House when it was on Bonna Avenue in Irvington. (A recent memory on my social media page notes that on July 5th, 2018, Charlie was going to be playing at the Coal Yard with Even Drybread and Pat Petrus.) Since that 2016 date, I have seen him in various Indianapolis concert places on many occasions, including concerts on his lawn in Rocky Ripple. The June 29th concert was unusual in that it was an acoustic affair. When the time was right, Quinn Sternberg lifted his bass from the floor and Charlie curled over his guitar and they opened with a piece called “Yellow Horses,” Charlie strumming his guitar and Quinn spanking his bass. Paula and I sat in silent appreciation of the skills the two musicians brought to the gathering, and at the end of each song, I delivered a loud cry of “YES!” and contributed to the enthusiastic applause from the rest of the audience. Between sets, Paula told me that the home we were in was a Justus home, a style which is much like her son’s home.
Charlie told the audience that he and Quinn Sternberg were long-time collaborators, and as I watched them play, it was obvious to me that they were, as they seamlessly “handed off” solos to each other. As he played, I noticed that Quinn’s bass was scarred by years of enthusiastic slapping. I remembered taking my son to St. Louis to see the jazz bassist Stanley Clarke, and heard in Quinn’s solos, echoes of the “bassmanship” that Clarke had delivered. As for Charlie and Quinn, their musicianship delivered to the audience “Love Letters,” and “Off Minor,” and “Like Never Been in Love Before.” When they took a break, Charlie said it was because his hand, unused to extended acoustic time, needed to rest.
Kati Taylor and Clear Vibes House Concerts gave a willing audience a chance to hear Charlie and Quinn. I hope that I am not alone in saying, “Thank you” for the good vibes.

cjon3acd@att.net

Big Game Hunter

CJ Woods III — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 05:08:34 +0000

I was startled into an impromptu Capoeira dance, whirling and slapping at my face and arms, as if trying to put out little brush fires. A moth had attacked me. It did not live to tell its friends of my demonstration of fear. I stood over the crushed body and roared: the Big Game Hunter had triumphed, again.
My first bride had a no-kill policy with regard to insect life, and I spent many years coaxing bugs back into the bush. Bride Two embraced the “shock and awe” method of insect removal, which enabled me to conceal my fear of wildlife.
I was employed at the Marble Hill Nuclear Power Plant when I survived my first moth attack. I lived in Southern Indiana at a time when the greater part of the state did not observe Daylight Savings Time. Marble Hill was an hour’s drive away, into an area that did observe the biannual flip-flop. I left the house at 4 a.m., drove for an hour, and arrived at 6 a.m. I left the job at 2:30, drove for an hour, and arrived home at: 2:30. (Bride One was the original Time-Traveler’s Wife.)
My drive to work was along dark country roads, and in the Spring, I would roll down the windows of my VW Rabbit, and punch the darkness, the roaring wind offsetting my full-throated singing. One night, I was popped on the cheek by a thing fat, fuzzy and winged. I screamed, regained control of the car. Something fluttered on the floorboards. My right foot on the accelerator, I “stomped the yard” with my left. Movement ceased, and I continued my trip in terror. I bolted from the car when I got to the plant, and as I signed in, someone asked about the dust on my face. I found a mirror, and horrified, slapped the stuff from my cheeks. Later, I inspected the floor of my car: great chunks of wings and body parts indicated that the “moth” had been of prehistoric size. I whimpered, glanced around and recovered. I stood at the door of my car and roared: The Big Game Hunter.
My house on Orange Street, in Indianapolis, was loaded with me, Bride Two, three kids- 4, 5 and 16, and mice. Lisa, my oldest daughter, pointed out the intruder:
“Dad — there’s a mouse in my room.”
I sighed, thinking, “Be a man for the kids; be a man for the kids.” Mice terrify me. The height and weight disparity between the average me and a mouse does not reassure me. But I had to respond to The Kid’s cry for help.
A friend had, long ago, left his shotgun and his son’s BB gun at my house; they were promptly and safely stored away. The shotgun was empty, but BBs I thought, rattled in the little rifle. I got the weapon, and went hunting.
The mouse was trapped beneath a bookcase/desk in my daughter’s room. Red eyes winked in the beam of my flashlight, and the mouse’s belly pulsed in fear as it cowered in a corner. My pulse boomed in my ears as I cocked the BB gun.
Pop! Yeep! Pop! Yeep! I popped him again and again, and he yeeped, jumped, and stayed alive. (Do “air rifles” shoot air?) We grew weary of the air show, the mouse and I, and I finally coaxed it into a brown paper bag, and released it in the back yard.
My roar did not drown out the laughter of The Bride and The Kid, who knew the trembling, terrified truth that lay behind the Big Game Hunter’s cry.

This column first appeared in June 2009.

cjon3acd@att.net

Songs Flung Out

CJ Woods III — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 05:08:28 +0000

Early in the evening of June 15th, 2026, I was walking West on 9th St. between N. Hawthorne and Emerson Ave.; I saw a woman on the ground at the side of her yard, doing something gardening-wise. As I got closer to the house a young face popped into view on the porch. Peering over the bushes, a small boy smiled and waved at me, then said, brightly, “Good morning!” As is my wont, I returned the boy’s greeting with a song: “Good morning, good morning, how are you today? I love you; I love you, come out and go play!” The woman in the side yard, who might have been his mother, turned a wide smile on the two of us as I continued my walk toward Emerson Ave.
My impromptu delivery of song that day is typical of me; I’ve written of the songs that I sing to the staff upon my arrival at my favorite cidery, and the song that I sing when I leave. My melodic (I hope) outbursts prompted both the Editor and the Creative Director of this publication to suggest that I accept the invitation of the Irvington Arts Collective to join the Irvington Community Chorus; I have been “flinging out” songs with them since 2024. The song that I sang to that young boy that day was one that I composed for my youngest daughter, who used to be crabby when she woke up. I sang the song to encourage her to be more joyful when her eyes opened. The first time that I delivered it to her, Lauren slapped me on the chest and said, “Stop, please.” Operation “Epic Happiness” failed, but I soldiered on and was recently surprised to hear my youngest granddaughter quietly singing to one of her 7,000 toy dolls, the song that her mother had rejected. It is ironic that Myah did not sing the song I had composed for her, which starts, “Good morning, Crabby Appleton…” Like mother, like daughter, they say.
“Cogito, ergo sum” is a Latin phrase that translates to “I think, therefore I am,” which is the “first principle” of the philosophy of René Descartes, a French scientist and philosopher. I have co-opted and altered the phrase to “canto, ergo sum.” Canto is Latin for “I sing,” which I do. I fling out bits of song during my travels along the path of life. When my eldest child was in grade school, she was asked for a suggestion for a school program; Lisa responded, “My father will sing.” I have sung at weddings, as well as at my grandmother’s funeral. (That one was a very difficult, “Old Rugged Cross.”)
The titles of two of poet Maya Angelou’s autobiographical works are derived from lines from a poem written by Paul Laurence Dunbar. In “Sympathy,” Dunbar wrote “I know what the caged bird feels …” Later in the poem, he wrote that the song the caged bird sings is “… a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings …” I don’t know where my songs are going, except into the ears of (perhaps) unwitting “ear-witnesses,” but I will continue to fling them out. Due to some unfortunate family circumstances, I will not be able to participate in Harmony Collected’s last concert, a collaboration with the Indiana Choral Director’s Association on Monday, June 22nd. But I will be in attendance, listening raptly as Dr. Webb Parker, the Founding Executive and Artistic Director of the Irvington Arts Collective, encourages the chorus to fling out some more of the songs that we have practiced and flung out before.
“Canto!”

cjon3acd@att.net

Impossible Dreams (Two)

CJ Woods III — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 05:08:56 +0000

In May 1969, the R & B group “The Temptations” appeared on the Ed Sullivan show and sang a song that became a theme for me and the woman I would marry in July of that same year. “The Impossible Dream” was composed by Mitch Leah, with lyrics written by Joe Darion, for performance in the 1965 Broadway musical, “Man of La Mancha.” The song came to be featured prominently in my own life when my friend’s brother-in-law told me to go pursue my love: “Get a horse and a sword,” he told me. (My column by that name was published in the Weekly View in July 2009.) I pledged my troth to my friend, and we married. In 1970, we quit our jobs, bought a tent, and spent 6 weeks camping across the country from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Los Angeles California, where I was going to pursue my dream of being an artist. Her family called us “The Dreamers” and we named our 1963 Volkswagen Bug, “The Dreamer.” Whenever we would return to Pittsburgh to visit, my mother-in-law would ask me to sing to her, and always chose “The Impossible Dream.”
The television pregame publicity for the United States’ soccer team’s competition in the 2026 FIFA World Cup shows two men in conversation at a bar, discussing the upcoming matches. In the background of the commercial, Elvis Presley is crooning “The Impossible Dream.” One man is enthusiastic about the United States’ possibilities, but the other man asks, “Do you really think the U.S. can win?” At the other end of the bar, a man chews nuts and says to the two men: “You don’t believe in miracles?” He stands up and walks away, showing the back of his jacket, emblazoned with crossed hockey sticks, a reminder of the “Miracle On Ice,” the US hockey team’s defeat of a powerful Soviet team in the 1980 Winter Olympics.
I watched the U.S. vs Paraguay game on Friday, June 12th. I understand very little of the game, though I remember my two youngest children running up and down the field in Mooresville Indiana, and their cousin, my first granddaughter, in goal in Cedar Knolls, New Jersey. I understood — somewhat — the object of the goalie: Keep the ball out of the net. The rest of the game is a mystery to me, but I shouted out “BOOM!” when the U.S. drew first blood against Paraguay. Soon that first score was augmented, when “striker” Folarin Jerry Balogun scored two more, becoming the first player to score multiple goals in a World Cup game since 1930, the last time that the games were played in the United States.
The U.S. won the game against Paraguay 4-1. My lack of knowledge about the technical aspects of the game — “offside,” yellow cards and red cards — did not keep me from rooting for the home team: The U.S. got four boisterous “booms” from me. My shallow dive into the research pool showed that now, we (what do you mean “we” writer-man?) must win 7 more games to achieve that impossible dream. The U.S. Men’s National Team (USMNT) plays Australia next, and though I have a very good friend who lives in Australia — I sang in her wedding — my “booming” will be reserved exclusively for the U.S. team.
It is not too much to hope that when the 2026 World Cup ends — perhaps with a 30-second-long cry of “Gooooaaalllll! — “Elvis The Pelvis” and the “Tempting Temptations” will be singing, having done what they could to encourage the USMNT to dream the impossible dream and to reach the unreachable “Starrrr!”

cjon3acd@att.net

Impossible Dreams

CJ Woods III — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 05:08:49 +0000

In 2003, I was living in St. Louis Missouri; I’d relocated there after my job in the L.S. Ayres’ advertising department was eliminated when the store closed. My new job with Famous Barr, the St. Louis department store, was also in the advertising department. My apartment was 8 blocks from the store, so I often walked to work. One day, I found that the bar I passed on my way home from work had pool tables and Rolling Rock beer. It became my bar of choice. While on the way home from work one weary workday, I encountered a lot of excitement. Someone barred my passage, saying that “the set was closed.” I challenged that person: “Hey: This is a public street, and you’re impeding my progress to my home!” Then, I ducked into the bar to have a Rolling Rock.
The street had been blocked off to vehicle traffic because director David Anspaugh was filming a movie. I did not know who Anspaugh was, nor did I know the name of his film, but I saw vintage cars from the 1940s and 50s had been trucked in and distributed about the closed street, and some of the businesses were transformed to resemble 1950s establishments. Since the filming site was on my way home, I spent quite a bit of time on the set. I took pictures of the people filming and the sets, and of the actors, some of whom would step into the bar for an occasional libation. I have a picture of Gerard Butler, one of the stars of the film, and lots of pictures of the old cars, which were as shiny as if they were new. Two years later, in 2005, “The Game Of Their Lives” was released.
The 1950 FIFA (International Federation of Association Football) World Cup was held in the city of Belo Horizonte, in southeastern Brazil; The United States’ World Cup soccer team was an underdog entry into the competition. The filming of many parts of “The Game Of Their Lives” was in St. Louis ostensibly because five of the team members were from St. Louis, four of whom were from “The Hill,” an area in St. Louis where the inhabitants were primarily Italian. Many of the actors were chosen for their ability to play soccer. Gerard Butler, a Scotsman who grew up playing soccer, played goalkeeper Frank Borghi in the film. Borghi’s goalkeeping helped to seal the United States’ “1-nil” (one goal to none) victory over “soccer powerhouse” England.
David Anspaugh’s direction of the film was based on a screenplay written by a friend he had met when the two were students at Indiana University in Bloomington. Angelo Pizzo’s screenplay was based on the book, “The Game Of Their Lives,” written by Geoffrey Douglas. Pizzo also wrote the Indiana favorite “Hoosiers,” as well as “Rudy.”
On Friday, June 12th, the United States will go into soccer-battle against Paraguay, in a group D first round match for the 2026 World Cup. The game will be held at Los Angeles Stadium in Inglewood California. (I’ve lived there, too.) The U.S. is not favored in this match, but then: miracles, happen, right? In 1980, during the Winter Olympics at Lake Placid New York, the underdog United States’ hockey team defeated the powerful Soviet team. That game came to be called “The Miracle on Ice.”
I don’t know if my shenanigans at the filming site of “The Game Of Their Lives” affected the film; it was not well-received. But the story is uplifting, nonetheless; we can hope that it will be repeated in 2026.

cjon3acd@att.net

Something About Pittsburgh

CJ Woods III — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 05:08:54 +0000

Someone with whom I was having a conversation said that they did not know that Pittsburgh had such a foundation in music, especially, jazz. I mentioned that jazz-guitar player George Benson was from Pittsburgh, and that my uncle Donald had a jazz band, with a piano player named “Fritz” Jones. (We know “Fritz” as Ahmad Jamal, now.) I’m not sure if I told the person the story of my father introducing his 8-year-old son (me) to a grown man named “Dizzy.” I thought at the time that it was a strange name for an adult man; it would be years before I realized that I had met jazz trumpeter John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie. An episode of the TV show “Watson” opens with a graphic saying “Lower Hill,” and a woman playing saxophone in a jazz club. Watson is played by Morris Chestnut; Watson’s father has a jazz club in Pittsburgh. The “Lower Hill” is where I used to watch “Georgie” play guitar.
Recent unfortunate circumstances took me back to the city of my birth. My two nieces picked me up at the bus station and took me to their home in Beechview, outside of the Pittsburgh city limits. As we wended our way along highway 376, I asked one of them which river we were driving beside. The natives fumbled for a moment before they remembered the Monongahela, one of the two rivers at whose confluence the mighty Ohio is formed. We climbed hills and turned onto other hills until we reached Beechview, and the hill on which they live. I imagined that I could hear Bill Henderson singing “The Folks Who Live On The Hill.” And oh, those hills.
In the town of Beechview there is a commemorative sign at the foot of Canton Street that boasts that it is the “steepest … in the Continental United States,” and proclaims that the street has “an ankle-straining 37% grade.” Looking up that grade is an imposing view, almost straight into the sky. My first bride taught me to drive on hills such as this, and I had to learn to hold my 4-speed manual VW on a hill without using the handbrake: clutch and gas, only. (Try that, you speed-minions of May.) Right next to the “ankle-straining” street, there is another sign: “Graymore Ave.” To those unfamiliar with the Pittsburgh area’s history, this sign would appear to point toward a series of steps. But as author Bob Regan pointed out in his book, “The Steps of Pittsburgh: Portrait of a City,” this may be one of the “712 sets of steps, 44,645 treads, 24,208 vertical feet” that are legal streets. I travelled those steps long before I ever drove on a paved (and cobbled) city street.
That is something about Pittsburgh. Hills and rivers and steps and music, music that includes jazz guitarist George Benson, jazz pianist Ahmad Jamal, and singer and actress Phyllis Hyman, whom I met when she lived in St. Clair Village, in the South Hills section of Pittsburgh. Phyllis and I danced together, eye to eye: She was 6 feet tall. We also sang together, long before she performed in the musical revue “Sophisticated Ladies” on Broadway, where she earned a Theater World Award and a Tony Award nomination.
Oh: And football. I remember when my friend Steve Nicewanger was excited to hear that my old classmate, Francis Peay, was going to be an assistant coach with the Indianapolis Colts. I wrote of my “Fear Of Franny” (The Weekly View May 2009; reprinted Sept. 9th, 2021,) but was glad to see the ‘Burgh represented in Indy.

cjon3acd@att.net

11 Labs A’ Licking

CJ Woods III — Thu, 21 May 2026 05:08:25 +0000

My yellow lab had 11 puppies, one night. I was there for the birth of all of them.
“Allie Dog Woods,” as my youngest daughter called her, was sweet and gentle, and loved to chew the rubber on the gas grill. (Wait- that last one wasn’t a good thing.) But Allie refused to eat my son when he had his arm down her throat. She just gagged, gave me a piteous look: “Can you take this kids’ arm out of my throat?” (Eighteen years later, my son tried that trick with an American Bulldog, with disastrous results.)
Allie was not spayed, and I took great care to keep her inside when she was most attractive to the neighborhood thug-dogs. I failed, once.
A four-foot fence ringed our back yard. It kept out little dogs, but no cats, squirrels, nor that big black brute of a canine from down the alley. I’m not a dog-fearing man, but when I would come out of the back door to find this dude sniffing Allie’s spots in the yard, I would hesitate.
“Shoo,” I would whisper, positioned to leap into the house. The brute would raise his head, look at me, and saunter to the fence, which he cleared in one muscular bound. I’d bounce into the back yard and strut, whispering, “Yeah! You want some of this?”
Allie grew, swelled and blew up, until it was obvious: she was pregnant.
One evening, Lauryn said to me, “Daddy, something’s wrong with Allie.” Fat Allie, swollen with pups, was taking what I thought was a potty break in the back yard. I peeked into the dark, and could see a white bag bulging beneath her. I stepped out, came closer, and “Defcon 4! We’re in delivery!”
I coaxed Allie back into house, and she delivered her pup on the back porch. Lauryn and Chris peeked at the pup over the child-gate. There was licking and other dog-things, and when Allie wanted to go outside again, I didn’t let her. She rewarded my refusal with the delivery of — another pup! I realized that “litter” described dog’s deliveries, and I was in for a long night. I papered the back porch, and sat down to wait. Sometime around 5 a.m., Allie delivered the 11th pup. (I had fallen asleep, so the time is approximate. This pup did not live.)
I learned some animal husbandry that night, and about the defecatory habits of newborn pups. The cruds were crap machines, superb newsprint slimers. Allie also stressed my mathematical capabilities. She had fewer, ahem, spigots, than pups. I devised a routine. Wake up in the morning, put ten pups in a box and let Allie out, clean up the papers and the porch, let Allie in, put five pups in a box and five on the mom, flip Allie and plop 5 new pups on her. Puppy parenting is hard work.
We had lots of dogs. I have pictures: my eldest daughter sitting on the couch with a puppy peeking out of her sweatshirt; puppies crawling over two giggling kids on the floor. We named them. We even had a “Roly,” in honor of the 101 Dalmations.
We did not keep those 10 pups and Allie never commented on her loss. But I remember the births, and paper-sliming, the whimpers and suckling, the baths and the day when the dog family spread across the back yard, yapping and crapping.
The brute stood at the corner of the fence, looked in, and sauntered back down the alley. “Yeah. That’s what I’m talkin’ about!”

This column first appeared in June 2009.

cjon3acd@att.net

The Howl of May

CJ Woods III — Thu, 14 May 2026 05:08:32 +0000

Three motorcycles roared Eastward on 10th Street, passing me with blatting pipes; one was a “tri-ped,” and someone had installed speakers that put out multi-decibel aural insults. As I walked down E. 10th Street, I added the sounds of those motorcycles to the roar of glasspack muffler-equipped muscle cars, their drivers arrogantly demonstrating a blatant disregard for the eardrums of pedestrians. But hey: it’s May. The 500 is next up.
When I lived in St. Louis Missouri in the early 90s, I still maintained a relationship with two friends that I had made before I left Indianapolis Indiana. The “Three Amigos” — Lisa, Nancy, and CJ — had formed after I met Lisa Clarkson at Indiana University Southeast, where we were both students. Lisa insisted that I meet her best friend, Nancy, and the three of us bonded. I attended one of Nancy’s weddings, and after Lisa moved to Florida, I visited her as often as I could. Nancy’s husband, Bill Davis, was a car-race enthusiast, and regularly acquired tickets to the Indianapolis 500. Bill and Nancy still lived in Southern Indiana, and regularly attended the race. One year, Bill invited Nancy’s two best buds — CJ and Lisa — to attend the race with them. I flew in from St. Louis and Lisa flew in from Florida.
Quiet as it’s kept (to use a phrase from Toni Morrison’s novel, “The Bluest Eye,”) I was not a big fan of the “vroom-vroom,” nor was Lisa. But we wanted to be with our friends, and there was a big race, and we went. I cannot remember the date, but it was sometime in the early 90s; I moved to St. Louis in 1993, so it was after that. Sharp journalist that I am, I also cannot remember who ran in the race, nor who won. I do recall that the tickets that Lisa and I had were not in the same area with Bill and Nancy and their other friends, so the two of us were alone at an event that we were interested in only because of the people we adored. And we were frying in the hot sun, asking each other, “Are we having fun yet?” But we survived that race, and when the next year’s invitation came around, we again, got tickets. This time, we were with the in-crowd, and I was able to aim my camera at whatever turn that was near us. Even with my new Nikon camera, (with which I loved to take photographs, Momma) I managed only to get the rear spoilers of the roaring cars.
When I lived in Los Angeles California in the early 1970s, there were automobile laws and ordinances at which Hoosiers would have cackled. A driver could be ticketed for demonstrating an “unnecessary display of speed” — screeching away from a stop — or having mufflers that were too loud. (I’m not sure how the noise was measured, but hey…) When I was young, in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, my first bride’s sister had a friend who owned a Lotus Ford. He took me for a spin, one that topped one-hundred-ten miles per hour. (I deny the rumor that I wet myself.) But that was then, and this is now, and it is May in Indianapolis.
I no longer live close enough to the Speedrome on S. Kitley Avenue to hear the howl of the cars in the evening, but there are plenty of cars hammering down E. 10th Street to remind me that it is May, and “the greatest spectacle in racing” is coming, and street racers are practicing for the howl into the third turn.

cjon3acd@att.net

Ink

CJ Woods III — Thu, 07 May 2026 05:08:55 +0000

A friend posted a rant on a social media site that set free the hounds that had been dogging me for some time. The post indicated that he could not understand the proliferation of tattoos on men in the St. Louis Missouri area. He wrote that men were working out in the gym, shirtless, and covered in unreadable script. A former advertising department employee, the poster noted that the script used by one tattooed man was an “unreadable font,” principally designed for headers.
I’ve been curious about the proliferation of tattoos for some time. When I was young in the 1950s and 1960s, there were few people brandishing tats, and those who did were former service-people or prison and jailhouse graduates. In my four years in high school, I saw not one person with a tattoo, and the boys in gym class swam naked when it was pool time. (I was on the swim team, so I was allowed to wear my trunks.) There was a trend, sometime in the 70s or 80s, when women would get what my sister called a “tramp stamp,” which was a tattoo on the back, just above the buttocks. This tattoo was visible when the inked one wore low-riding pants and high-riding tank tops and (gasp!) bent over.
In every bar and restaurant that I visit, there are tattooed people. Servers slide drinks to me, extending arms that have graphics climbing from beneath the sleeves and across those arms, as well as the wrists and hands. Of course, these are not the graphics of the thug life: No one has a teardrop beneath the eye, indicating a murderous moment. But in my observance of the tattooed world, I am always curious about the glorious graphics spread across the backs of people. Do those tatted not want to see the wondrous works inscribed on their bodies? Or do they all have “surround body” mirrors that they can use to admire the work?
When I was an Art Director in the advertising department for Indianapolis’ L.S. Ayres department store, we would contract for models to wear the clothing we photographed to put into the catalogs that we sent to the homes of our customers. When the images from the photo-shoots were processed, we were instructed to remove any tattoos that the models might have had.
My youngest daughter has 6 instances of buzz-work (“bzzzz” being the sound of the tattoo thingy). Among them, on her foot, she has her grandmother’s name (my mother,) date of birth, date of death and a lily; she has her own daughter’s name and footprint on an arm, and her thigh is festooned with daffodils, poppies, water lilies and lily of valley. A swallow flies on her shoulder. (She does not know if it is a barn swallow or tree swallow.) The actor Robert LaSordo played Memmo Fierro, an archenemy of Horatio Caine, played by David Caruso. Caine is a Lieutenant in the Miami-Dade Police department’s crime lab; LaSordo is a bandit, and is tattooed from his neck to his… nethers?
Whenever I see ink climbing into and out of the clothing of the people around me, I try to imagine what kind of will power it must take to allow someone to drill ink onto your skin. I also hear the voice of Jimmy Durante, singing his 1933 song: “Ink a dink a dink, a dink a doo…” Perhaps, with so many young people getting buzz-work, I should be hearing the children’s song: “Skidamarink.” As noted in that ditty, the process of getting some ink could mean, “I love you.”

cjon3acd@att.net

Boom

CJ Woods III — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 05:08:10 +0000

“It’s a bomb!”
When the man on the “cops and robbers” TV show I was watching said that it reminded me of one of the jobs my father held when I was young. He was an automobile mechanic in a garage, and I remember being in the building where the work was being done. The garage was on the top floor of a parking facility with a circular ramp that led up to it. In the 1950s, men called cars that were in less than pristine condition, “bombs,” and when a mechanic brought his own car into the garage, the others would bellow, “BOOM!” This would signal that the car was a “bomb.” It would be many years before I had the opportunity to own a “bomb.”
It was uncommon on the Hill District of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania in the 1950s and 1960s for teenagers to possess or have access to cars. When I graduated from high school, I don’t think that many of my fellow graduates had a car to take a date to the prom. I took public transportation to every event that I attended, even to the wedding of a good friend and co-worker. My cousin’s friend was a salesperson for a shoe store (he sold me my first pair of Bally shoes) and he had a red, 1963 Oldsmobile Starfire convertible; the car had a great slab of chrome from the front to the rear. This car was most definitely, not a “bomb.” We walking young men were envious of him, but continued to take buses, streetcars, and jitneys (illegal taxis) to where we had to go.
My first car did not go “boom:” it was a 1963 Volkswagen Bug. My first bride and I purchased it from a friend of her family, and she taught me how to drive in it. (I had no license; she did.) I do not know how many millions of miles it had on it, but we called it “The Dreamer,” since we two were going to set out to seek our dreams in California. The car took us from Pittsburgh to Los Angeles via Ohio, Missouri, Kansas, and Colorado, and only broke down once. When we got to Los Angeles, I put some unapproved fluid into its aluminum engine and killed it. We sold it to someone who converted it into a dune buggy. Since we had become VW enthusiasts, the next car we bought was a 1972 VW Super Beetle; this was not a bomb, and we drove it until we retired it and purchased a Triumph TR6, which was also not a bomb. It did have a bad habit of accelerating on its own, though. When the dealership could not correct that condition, we got rid of the TR6, and got some 4-door, boring Dad-car. No bomb, this. Nor was it a “hooptie,” or a “bucket,” which are two other slang terms for the 1950s “bomb.”
With the tension in the world these days, we must be careful about the terms we sling about. An adage notes that “freedom of speech” does not allow us to falsely yell “fire” in a crowded theater. When someone drives their “bucket” past a public assembly, no careful and cautious person is likely to bellow, “bomb!” This is likely to cause a riotous response, replete with a police presence, and an embarrassing visit to the local station. But we can compliment someone’s cooking by saying, “This pie is the BOMB,” or something else is “the bomb-diggity!”
It is safer to note that the passing “hooptie” is a “bucket.”
Definitely: Not a bomb.

cjon3acd@att.net