Link to GEP paper.
Here is a link to the paper I wrote. Again, try not to judge it too harshly since I struggled with the format the teacher wanted. It was very unnatural for me to write and I ended up pushing through it over night. It is probably one of the most difficult papers I have written because of this. The subject itself was fascinating and the data was fun to pull together. Ok I'm done defending myself. :D Enjoy...
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Saturday, December 12, 2009
The Pop-riveted Wonder
It was green, wasn't it? Last time I saw it, green was the predominant color. A dark, dusty green, with small cracks where the sun had been able to get through the shiny gloss that enticed the original owner. The cracks ran down to a peachy spot that was sandy and dull and picked up on the other side where they branched out to a burgundy burst of rattle can paint. Then they dove on down to where it suddenly stopped short in the mottled silver of tin that took up where the crack had left off. A rivet seam sewed the tin to the fractured green.
Each tin patch gave way to another tin patch, their rivets lined up in precise rows until the tin gave way to a cancerous lesion's lacy edge. The rust that threatened to end the life of the venerable machine, eating it in pieces and leaving it in the Upper Michigan driveway to nourish life with its oxidized iron.
Sometimes Dad, a tall imposing man whose gigantic hands were the terror of every naughty boy in Sabbath School, would wind up its motor and charge the feisty steed shooting gravel from under balding tires down the driveway toward the growing pothole that marked the quarter mile point. As my brother, Eric, and I, bent toward the space between the two front seats our blond heads nearly colliding in the center with each lurch. Our eyes were pinned wide open with the g-forces and we leaned forward with the thrill that 35 miles per hour on a gravel road can give two grade schoolers.
Then we would hit the dip, our seats dropped out from under us, our heads rapped the seat in front. We would be suspended for just a second at the apex of our bounce and then we would be falling down while the seat came up impacting our bums with the force of a resounding spank. Our high voices would cheer. The sharp smell of the dust that had hovered above its resting spot, the lightly grooved plastic mats, was pulled into our noses as we inhaled sharply. Dad cheered too, I think, but it sounded kind of like, "it should make it to school and back." The struts were rusted so badly he feared they would give out and the sporty hatch-backed car would strand us on a lonely country lane while doing the permanent splits with its tires.
Normal places people don't have to worry about breaking their struts on the way to school, even if they are rusting. But Upper Michigan was hit hard by the slump of the 80's and it was rumored that our town had written the head of the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to stock our potholes so all the non-vegetarians could all have fish to eat. We vegetarians were happy too, that meant more food for us since everyone else would be eating their Rainbow Trout, Sucker or Coho Salmon. Maybe, the hardy locals whispered, they would even stock a few Smelt for those prone to biting the head off of the little fish in the ecstasy of successful fishing.
This fish head biting was a local tradition. My 10 year old male classmates would puff out their scrawny plaid, flannel covered chests and recount their latest experience of this tradition hoping to make the small female population at our school scream. Most of the girls did scream, their stiffly sprayed bank of upright bangs quivering in their horror. The DNR never did honor the request and it seems that the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) - busily making life better under the bridge, never came to patch the holes. And so my dad continued to try to break the car in the driveway where we could get home easily.
I didn't like the car. In spite of the joy of the daily NASCAR like drive down to the looming pothole in the driveway it was beneath my 10 year old permed and hair sprayed dignity. Thinking back, it was the 80's, everything was ugly and there were very few new cars on the road but somehow I knew I rode in the ugliest car in the nation. This was my third school since I started five years ago and since it was populated with cousins and people of the North that had dug in for years, as a newcomer I did not feel welcome. Simply put, I was really not cool. Life was a tragedy and that was compounded by the green patch worked Datsun that got us to school.
As Dad drove, I would sink down in my back seat, well under the little triangle of glass that was my window. When we arrived to our orange and white vertically striped, tin sided school, Dad pulled the grayed green emergency break until it clicked out to its last setting and hopped out the "pop" the seat. I would scramble out careful not to catch my tightly pegged jeans on the car and hoped that no one, in the twenty kid classroom would see me out the plate glass windows.
Even then I had to admit it added brightness to my life. Eric and I with our heads down resting on our knees would amuse ourselves by pealing up the aforementioned rubbery black floor mats and peer at the pavement streaking by. The different colored rocks that made up the gray concrete would speed by making faint streaks of color under the car. We would whisper in conspiratorial tones about what we would do if we were kidnapped in the Datsun. At 10 and 7 we had it all planned out. We kept an arsenal of driveway gravel on the floor near our seats. IF someone were foolish enough to steal the Hornbacher children we would quickly pull up the mats to the secret holes in the floor and drop out the little rocks. A Hansel and Gretel trail of gravel. It was infallible.
But the best story happened when the Mother-in-law or Coco as we all called her, came up to visit.
To be continued...
Each tin patch gave way to another tin patch, their rivets lined up in precise rows until the tin gave way to a cancerous lesion's lacy edge. The rust that threatened to end the life of the venerable machine, eating it in pieces and leaving it in the Upper Michigan driveway to nourish life with its oxidized iron.
Sometimes Dad, a tall imposing man whose gigantic hands were the terror of every naughty boy in Sabbath School, would wind up its motor and charge the feisty steed shooting gravel from under balding tires down the driveway toward the growing pothole that marked the quarter mile point. As my brother, Eric, and I, bent toward the space between the two front seats our blond heads nearly colliding in the center with each lurch. Our eyes were pinned wide open with the g-forces and we leaned forward with the thrill that 35 miles per hour on a gravel road can give two grade schoolers.
Then we would hit the dip, our seats dropped out from under us, our heads rapped the seat in front. We would be suspended for just a second at the apex of our bounce and then we would be falling down while the seat came up impacting our bums with the force of a resounding spank. Our high voices would cheer. The sharp smell of the dust that had hovered above its resting spot, the lightly grooved plastic mats, was pulled into our noses as we inhaled sharply. Dad cheered too, I think, but it sounded kind of like, "it should make it to school and back." The struts were rusted so badly he feared they would give out and the sporty hatch-backed car would strand us on a lonely country lane while doing the permanent splits with its tires.
Normal places people don't have to worry about breaking their struts on the way to school, even if they are rusting. But Upper Michigan was hit hard by the slump of the 80's and it was rumored that our town had written the head of the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to stock our potholes so all the non-vegetarians could all have fish to eat. We vegetarians were happy too, that meant more food for us since everyone else would be eating their Rainbow Trout, Sucker or Coho Salmon. Maybe, the hardy locals whispered, they would even stock a few Smelt for those prone to biting the head off of the little fish in the ecstasy of successful fishing.
This fish head biting was a local tradition. My 10 year old male classmates would puff out their scrawny plaid, flannel covered chests and recount their latest experience of this tradition hoping to make the small female population at our school scream. Most of the girls did scream, their stiffly sprayed bank of upright bangs quivering in their horror. The DNR never did honor the request and it seems that the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) - busily making life better under the bridge, never came to patch the holes. And so my dad continued to try to break the car in the driveway where we could get home easily.
I didn't like the car. In spite of the joy of the daily NASCAR like drive down to the looming pothole in the driveway it was beneath my 10 year old permed and hair sprayed dignity. Thinking back, it was the 80's, everything was ugly and there were very few new cars on the road but somehow I knew I rode in the ugliest car in the nation. This was my third school since I started five years ago and since it was populated with cousins and people of the North that had dug in for years, as a newcomer I did not feel welcome. Simply put, I was really not cool. Life was a tragedy and that was compounded by the green patch worked Datsun that got us to school.
As Dad drove, I would sink down in my back seat, well under the little triangle of glass that was my window. When we arrived to our orange and white vertically striped, tin sided school, Dad pulled the grayed green emergency break until it clicked out to its last setting and hopped out the "pop" the seat. I would scramble out careful not to catch my tightly pegged jeans on the car and hoped that no one, in the twenty kid classroom would see me out the plate glass windows.
Even then I had to admit it added brightness to my life. Eric and I with our heads down resting on our knees would amuse ourselves by pealing up the aforementioned rubbery black floor mats and peer at the pavement streaking by. The different colored rocks that made up the gray concrete would speed by making faint streaks of color under the car. We would whisper in conspiratorial tones about what we would do if we were kidnapped in the Datsun. At 10 and 7 we had it all planned out. We kept an arsenal of driveway gravel on the floor near our seats. IF someone were foolish enough to steal the Hornbacher children we would quickly pull up the mats to the secret holes in the floor and drop out the little rocks. A Hansel and Gretel trail of gravel. It was infallible.
But the best story happened when the Mother-in-law or Coco as we all called her, came up to visit.
To be continued...
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