Rolling through the Iowa heartland, state of my birth, on the eastbound California Zephyr, rocking at times on uneven rails, passing lush May greenery, flooded lowlands, and muddy rivers, evidence of the heavy rains that moved east overnight, I was a mite concerned about making my connection in Chicago. I left Lincoln, Neb., at 6 a.m. Sunday on Amtrak train No. 6 that was scheduled to leave at 3:26 a.m., its alleged arrival time in Chicago, originally set for 2:50 p.m., looking more like 5:10 as I rode east. The Capitol Limited that would take me home to Alliance was scheduled to leave Union Station at 6:10 p.m., so I worried about cutting it close as the train slowed while some mysterious inspector — person or computerized machine or a combination of the two? — checked the tracks for possible flash flood damage.
The trip to visit my friend in Nebraska was my first by train, and, although train travel is slow compared to jets, it offers many advantages. First, I enjoy seeing the landscape and especially three rivers of monumental importance, past and present, in the United States: the Mississippi, the Missouri and the Platte, the last the river the westbound emigrants followed to Oregon, California and Salt Lake City. The Platte lived up to all I’ve read it to be — wide, shallow and laden with sandbars, and I pictured teams of oxen struggling to pull wagons through that riverine quagmire.

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An Alliance Review column … A Scriptorium production … A presentation from John  G. Whitacre, aided by Amanda Weber and Christopher Schillig
(The following commentaries do not reflect the views of The Alliance Review, its readers, its advertisers, its subscribers, or the gerbils and birds whose cages it lines. The author is not responsible for editorial changes made after submission of his work. The Alliance Review and the author are not responsible for financial loss, dismemberment or death inflicted upon readers who try any ideas suggested by the author’s piece. This essay may or may not be a work of fiction and makes no claim to historical authenticity.)
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So I say to fellow columnist Chris Schillig last week how much I hate historical present. I can tell he feels less strongly about it than I do, but he is interested in hearing my thoughts. Historical present (HP hereafter) is the use of present tense to describe past happenings, and it drives me bonkers.
Museum guides love HP. Perhaps they think it makes the action sound more immediate, but it just irritates me. The tour guide:
“Jedediah marries Jememiah, and they live in a small log cabin while Jed builds a frame house, which Jem demands during their prenuptial discussion. ‘I ain’t livin’ in no gol-durn log cabin,’ she tells him. ‘If you make me live there, I’ll up and R-U-N-N-O-F-T.’ Jed works all summer on the frame house, but a tornado rips through the countryside and destroys his work,” and so on.
HP annoys me mainly because it is annoying, but at times it creates confusion, when the guide truly needs the present tense, and you, the visitor, can’t tell when the action happened. I get so annoyed at the tour guide using HP that I begin to focus more on his use of HP than on the information offered, and I eventually drift back in to the conversation after Jem threatens to divorce Jed unless he remodels the kitchen in the new house, which is almost flattened by an earthquake, and now they have 15 kids, and one of them won’t quit twangin’ the banjer. So when did the quake happen, I wonder, and where did all those kids come from?
Does some international museum guide training program give lessons in the use of HP? Its use is nearly universal and ubiquitous. I’ll congratulate and generously tip the tour guide who has the daring to use good old past tense, but I figure I can spend that money on beer because I’ll never need it otherwise.
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Paragraph Selection: 1. John Whitacre complains to Chris. 2. Jed marries Jem. 3. Annoyance. 4. Training programs.
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Editor’s commentary: This column describes Whitacre’s passionate hatred of  historical present. He first presented the idea for the column to me over margaritas at Don Pancho’s. We envisioned Salma Hayek in the lead role as the museum guide who uses historical present, so we called her, and she loved the idea. She offered to do the part for free because it is her dream role. We wanted Don Knotts in the supporting role, but someone reminded us that he has gone on to Mayberry-in-the-Sky.
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Previews:
1. The guitar loaded with music: John finds a bundle of blues packed in his new mahogany Martin guitar. 2. Talk like a cop: John campaigns for plain English in the law enforcement profession. 3. A visit to Lincoln: John visits his friend Dale in Nebraska. 4. The mandocello: John discusses the big, deep cousin of the mandolin.

Standing in line at Marc’s one Friday, I was craving fruit and spices, and I made this list: coffee, chocolate, lime juice, chiles, garlic, onion, cinnamon and banana, intending to make everything on that list part of that day’s diet. I had already had coffee, but the remainder needed attention. Later I added nuts, tea, vanilla, pepper and oils to the list.
You may notice that many of these foods come from the tropics or subtropical regions. I discovered that fact when, a few years ago, I studied and wrote columns about cocoa (published in The Review March 13, 2007), chiles (Dec. 9, 2008) and pineapples (March 6, 2007). It seems that many of our most flavorful foods and spices come from the warm regions. Read the rest of this entry »

Yellow daffodils were in full bloom when I stopped at my parents’ house on Wednesday. Those cheery flowers of spring gave a false impression that all was well inside, that my mother was in there sitting on her couch knitting, but she died in November, and it was ironic that those flowers were flourishing after my mother was gone. It’s only the latest in this type of nearly automatic reaction to seeing from the outside the house where I spent my childhood, looking convincingly but deceivingly normal while inside the walls and floors echo the structure’s emptiness. Read the rest of this entry »

My mother died on Nov. 26, and rather than write a beautiful award-winning piece on losing my parent where I conclude with a nugget of wisdom about the human condition, such as describing her love of knitting as a metaphor for her knitting together a family dominated by males, I instead offer a few miscellaneous reflections.
As I described two weeks ago, the pink brick house in North Canton was our family home, owned only by our family, so to see it being emptied after 48 years of continuous occupation by the same family is difficult. Knowing for months it was coming doesn’t help either. Read the rest of this entry »

I was a child in North Canton at an ideal time. Enough woods, field and swamp lay within biking and walking distance to provide an abundance of activity for a child who loved the outdoors. We lived on Chapple Hill Drive, one block south of Applegrove, which started at Overland on the west and dead-ended at a field near Bob O’Link Golf Course on the east. When we moved in we were only the second house on our side of the street, the other an old farmhouse barely within sight over a slight rise in the land.
We moved to North Canton in 1964 after a long house search while living in Kent. My father had taken a job in November 1963 with Goodyear Aerospace in Suffield Township, and we moved on Thanksgiving weekend from Worthington to a house near the Cuyahoga River in Kent. We made trips on weekends to North Canton to look for houses, and I remember one dark winter night on the southwest side of the city looking out over the valley toward Whipple Avenue, which back then was a mere single-lane road bordered by farm land, its intersection with Everhard Road a simple four-way stop. Read the rest of this entry »

I bought these moosehide Minnetonka slipper moccasins last week. Moose is soft and soothing like deer but a bit thicker. I bought these moccasins with rubber soles for traction and because I wear my slippers during trips to the garage, patio and mailbox. Read the rest of this entry »

If you care about the environment, I have a number for you to call: 330-453-3700. But first, I want to tell you about Vermont.
My wife and I visited Vermont in 1998, part of trip covering eastern Long Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, Quebec and northern New York, and Vermont was easily the most scenic part of the trip thanks in part to long stretches of forest and mountains but also because Vermont at the time had a statewide prohibition against commercial signs along roads. The only signs we saw were road signs, including frequent moose warnings. (We never saw a single moose, but after all that traveling, I nearly hit a big buck half a block from home the day we returned.) It was refreshing to see scenery devoid of advertising.
So what does Vermont’s sign law have to do with the phone number I listed above? Maybe you’ve seen that phone number as you’ve driven around Stark County. It’s part of an advertisement, printed in black marker on small yellow signs, about 2 feet by 2 feet, that says, “$99 DOWN BAD CREDIT CAR LOANS (330) 453-3700.” Read the rest of this entry »

A week ago last Friday we got a drenching of sorely needed rain that was weeks overdue. The evening before I helped my wife plant our sunflower shoots, and the normally rich dirt was dusty and powdery, reminiscent of a desert. Grass has been so brown the yards look like August landscapes, so I was glad to see the rain. But as usual, the rain hit hardest when I drove on the expressway during my daily work trip to Alliance. This was to be expected, of course, because the rain was simply conforming to the Rain Act of 1990 and was not in the least to blame.
The Rain Act was passed when I worked in Akron and stipulates that the hardest rain falls during morning and afternoon rush hours. It can be blazing hot all day while I’m at work, but get on the freeway and, as if on cue, the sky opens up, pelting all those sorry drivers with every bit of rain it’s held back for oh too long. So I’m stuck in heavy traffic, hunched forward, squinting through my windshield with wipers on high, glad for the rain but wishing I were at home enjoying it. (I love rain showers in warm weather.) Read the rest of this entry »