Life of Hardin in Paraguay

Life of Hardin Vol. VI, No. 6

2009-11-18T08:45:00.000-06:00

Aren’t the Trees Lovely Today?

While poring the backlogs of correspondence, the editors discovered this gem, to which they have asked me to respond:

Why all the sarcasm? I just don’t get it. There’s always some sarcastic comment about the people on the bus, or the people at the grocery, or people anywhere. It sounds like you’re mad at the world all the time. Why don’t you write positive things? It might make you happier.

--unsigned

Let me make one thing clear: I am not mad! And it burns me up when gentle readers fail to see the humor and human commentary in a well-written, barb-laden, socially-aware article composed with tongue placed firmly in cheek. There are many subtle layers to sarcasm, irony, and satire that, when wielded properly, peel back the layers of the human condition in a way . . .

But forget all that. We shan’t go into it. Instead I will give the readers what they want. To wit:

Aren’t the trees lovely today? Their leaves have finished their annual transformation, a fall festival of explosive brilliance, a yearly ceremony to signify the end of summer, a final celebration of life when the foliage spends its last stores of energy in brilliant display before it falls dormant and brown o’er the winter. But only for winter! for it is a short rest, until the spring thaws and summer sun bring forth new green shoots. New life!

Just the other day I traversed an old byway--an ancient path carved by the leather-shorn feet of squaws burdened by precious papooses; by marching braves on the warpath; by the hooves of the passing fauna of the woods passing to and fro to gather food. Forgotten once, the path lay dormant in its own winter until new men paved it for use, traversed it with their own cargoes, then forgot it once more. It stands now as a memorial to those old days, a tunnel of colors--yellows, oranges, greens, in all shades, even living brown!--painted only by the brush of the Master Artist. Splashed across His canvas, stretched across the highway, aglow in the fiery rays of the sun, it called to me, lifted me above mere mortal ken and into the warm embrace of the ethereal plane.

What a glorious building is Nature! What a dazzling display of power, of mind, of inspiration, of beauty unparalleled by man’s miniscule powers of vision and creation. And yet, not so small. For has not God given man a portion of His own mind to create, to design, as a father also passes on to his children?

See the cabins set back in the woods along the road. Man designed them, built them using the happy marriage of thought and toil. With materials given by the trees and the land he built homes for his children--shelter, warmth, provision. Made from the forest, these same crude houses are also become part of the forest, part of the landscape, part of the grand painting that is life!

Soon the colors will fade, will take rest in the purity of white. The winter snows! But life remains. In the vibrant greens of the snow-laden cedars and firs. In the hoary wisps of smoke that carry the woody incense of life skyward. In the silent stalking of the fox, the scurry of the forest hare, the rumbled snoring of the black bear . . .

This could go on for pages. Normally you only hear this stuff from the lips of some love-struck fool and his first girlfriend, but I repeat it here for the benefit of the above correspondent and other like-minded readers. Happier? Debatable. Funny? The “World of Blissfully Happy People” is nice to watch sometimes, but funny it is not.

Life of Hardin Vol. VI, No. 5

2009-11-11T09:24:00.001-06:00

Blessing or a Curse?

It is a fine line between precious natural resource and a plague on mankind. Many of the most lovely, the most useful, the most uncommon, the most sought-after commodities become a scourge and a curse for that very reason. Men want them, and will do almost anything to get them. Take gold, for instance. Now at a record high of $1,100 an ounce. On seeing this, normal, calm, rational men transform into raving, wild-eyed, blood-thirsty, gold-feverish lunatics who will kill for just the touch of a nugget. Many a man has spilt his blood and that of his fellow man for gold.

Take another such naturally occurring substance: curly hair. Apply to it the same questions. Precious and sought-after natural resource? Or bane of man’s existence? As with many things, it depends on who asks, and how they look at it.

For young and dapper gentlemen between the ages of ten and seventeen, it is most certainly a bane. It refuses to be tamed, refuses to lie down, refuses to simply not call attention to itself at a time when boys just begin to realize that girls are paying attention to them and wish they wouldn’t if it means noticing that shock of wooly overgrowth that springs wild from their scalps. And so the only viable option is a process known as “scalping,” a drastic but necessary measure.

Once a young man reaches a more mature age, where the girls have a suitably more mature viewpoint on the matter, naturally curly hair is possibly the most valuable asset a man-about-town can have. It needs neither comb nor brush, and at the proper length takes less than two minutes of preparation. It knows what to do and does it; and no matter what it does (so it appears) it becomes an irresistible attractant to the opposite sex. This is partly due to the fact that all girls want naturally curly hair and spend hours fixing it to look right if they have it, and hours making it look like they have it if they don’t, and partly (and more importantly) due to the fact that it just looks this good and any guy man enough to wear it must be some kind of dude. The result is that they can’t keep their hands out of it.

HOWEVER (!), this effect does not wear off. As long as the hair is curly, it will attract women of any age with irresistible force. No matter if she is two or ninety-two, the female must and will run her hands through it. This is fine and lovely, up until the point that said curly-topped male has his own wife. Then his curly hair is worse than dynamite. She (his wife) has access; but be aware, young man, that others (not his wife) will without fail attempt to gain a touch of the now forbidden fruit. This is not all their fault. It is a reflex, an instinct, a hard-wired response too strong too resist. Allow this at your own peril!

A not-isolated example: A woman of experienced years (her hair was white and permed) spoke to me one day. “Oh, your hair is just so pretty.” And her hand, of its own accord, reached out to tousle it.

I replied: “Yes, but I have hardest time keeping girls’ hands out of it.”

Her hand snapped back to her side and continued to twitch, as though it were an effort to control it. Yet I had saved her (and myself) from the dangers of a jealous wife.

And so I put it to you. Naturally curly hair. Precious and sought-after natural resource? Or bane of man’s existence?

Who says it can’t be both?

Life of Hardin Vol. VI, No. 4

2009-11-11T09:21:00.001-06:00

Safe Halloween Tips

As this paper’s circulation expands and its number of readers increases, it also receives more and more letters to the editor. A small number of these are in the manner of adoring fans; a larger number are from readers offering not-so-adoring constructive criticisms (who are entitled to their opinions since, at the moment, we still allow freedom of speech in this county) that the Editors certainly appreciate and would appreciate even more if they would keep them to themselves; and then there is the tiny number who write in to seek wise counsel. This last section has grown to the point where the Editors feel it is their duty to address the needs of the public, and have thus hired an advice columnist to answer the questions of a thoughtful populace.

Our new columnist is Mr. Ray Clapp. He is a retired freelance plumber with over thirty years experience dealing with people. Here, in his first installment, Mr. Clapp will address a letter that could not be more timely. (The opinions of Mr. Clapp are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of this paper.)

ASK RAY

by Ray Clapp

Dear Ray:

I am the mother of a six year old and a four year old. I don’t like Halloween and have put off taking them trick-or-treating. They have begged and begged and so my husband and I are going to take them this year, but I am very concerned. What do I need to do to keep them safe?

Harrowed Halloween Mom

Well, Mom, I don’t know why you’ve waited so long let the kids out on Halloween. Other than Christmas, Halloween is the highlight of a kid’s year, what with the candy and all, and honestly I’d say keeping them in is pretty close to mental abuse. But anyway, I’m glad you’re sending them this year, so here are a few common sense tips to make Halloween enjoyable.

Be sure to send a cell phone with them. Modern technology makes Halloween safer than ever.
Give them a curfew. You’ll probably say nine, Mom, but I’d give them until ten. Halloween only comes once a year, after all.
Don’t dress them in dumb ghost costumes. Nobody likes them, and they may trip on them if they have to run after pulling a “trick” because somebody didn’t give them any candy but gave them a dang penny or toothbrush instead.
Speaking of “tricks,” be sure and send some t.p. and eggs with them if necessary. They probably won’t need them, because most people like to give out candy, but you never know.
Also, if they wear something black and not too baggy, like those skeleton suits or maybe even some type of pirate outfit, they can run faster 1) away from houses without being seen and 2) to get out of the way of cars without tripping.
Send some type of weapon with them in case they meet a weirdo. With so many kids around, most goofballs will stay away, but you never know when one might be brave. I recommend something from around the house and easy to handle, like a pipe wrench.
Be sure to check their candy when they get home. Your kids are first-timers, so they don’t know about the nasty orange-and-black peanut butter cheap-o candy some people give out. There might be something said for letting them make their own mistakes on this, but I’d just as soon save them the trouble. Weed out the crap.

Above all, Mom. Don’t worry and don’t baby them. Halloween comes natural to kids, so just let them use their common sense and they’ll be fine and you’ll have a happy Halloween for the whole family. Just don’t eat their candy when they get home.

Ray Clapp

Life of Hardin Vol. VI, No. 3

2009-11-11T09:20:00.002-06:00

Something New

The human animal astonishes all those who gaze upon it; and his need always for something new is one of those little eccentricities which make people look at each other (or themselves) and scratch their heads. What is this fascination with having something new?

Marketing gurus understand this urge. At the least, if they don’t understand it, they know how to manipulate it. They put the fancy new products right in the aisles of Wal-Mart and Target, where you can’t help but walk over them. They know that if they have the new line of blenders, of juicers, of automatic coffee makers, off to the side in their proper place, they won’t get noticed and no one will buy them unless they actually need one and go looking.

BUT! . . . But if they dangle them out in front, make you trip right over them, you realize, “I need that new Cuisinart. I am sick and tired of that old one; pushing its old, boring buttons; plugging in its old sticky cord that has six year’s worth of chocolate syrup and peanut butter residue gummed up on it. I need a new one!”

It often does not matter what that new thing is. We get excited anyway, so long as it is new. On Christmas morning, at birthdays, at weddings, we open presents, we complain when we get socks or ties or garlic presses--but we’re still happy that we got something. We opened something new! It was better than opening nothing at all!

Just the other day, I ran out of toothpaste. So I bought two more tubes, on sale for a dollar each (new is even better on sale). When I got home I put them next to the old, almost empty tube. The next morning faced me with one of the most difficult dilemmas of my life. I had this old, worn-out, squeezed down, beat up, crinkly, tube of toothpaste; and this wonderful, shiny, full, smooth, tube of new toothpaste. Joy of joys! Something new! But I still had the old. I stood with the old tube in my left hand, the new tube in my right hand, and faced myself in the mirror. I don’t want this old beat up tube. I want this new tube. It’s New! Eventually my miserliness won out, and I squeezed two more day’s worth of brushing from the old tube. But it was difficult.

Sale papers recognize this phenomenon. Never am I so happy in life as when I miss a Sunday paper and forget that “something I don’t know about but absolutely need” might be on sale today. When I happen to see the paper, I can’t help but pore over the ads. How pitiful I am once I have seen all the new things of which I was unaware, but thence having seen, must have but cannot afford.

Last Sunday my wife carelessly left a JoAnn’s circular on the table. You might as well leave out a loaded gun. My eyes could not turn away. Just look! NEW: Straw Bale or Indian Corn, 9.99 each. My choice! NEW: Cinnamon-Scented Pine Cones. Take me away! NEW: Floss Bobbins. What is it? I don’t know! But I must have it now. NEW: Gaudy purse handle things! Of course I’ll need a new purse to go them. And finally, fifty percent off a NEW Clay Conditioning Machine. Add textures to clay, soft metal sheets, and some design paper. I have not yet lived!

There should be a Betty Ford Clinic for this sort of thing, but there wouldn’t be enough rooms, and everyone would check out once the newness wore off.

Life of Hardin Vol. VI, No. 2

2009-10-15T13:41:00.003-05:00

A Translation Guide for Civil War Battlefield Brochures

A visit to a Civil War battlefield is an excellent way to spend a breezy summer afternoon. At the least you exercise your legs and soak up some history. (Take note, kids: You can procure extra credit with your history teacher if you take her a brochure and discuss why such-and-such battle changed the outcome of the whole blamed war.)

Your main guide at each park is the aforementioned brochure. These are acquired in each park’s Visitor’s Center. Inside you will find a map of the park and a brief description of the battle. Read the description, but know that all of the writers went to the same school on the same day. They have a formula they use and just add facts to the proper blanks (like a MadLib, only not funny). Until you learn to interpret brochure-speak, you might become confused and think you have already visited a particular park. In order to encourage the proper treatment and understanding of “Our Late Unpleasantness,” I draw your notice to the following points.

Thing to Notice in the Brochure #1:

Without exception, according to the brochures, every battle is “one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War.” They all lay claim to that distinction in some way. Some are the bloodiest single day. Some are the bloodiest en total. Some have the highest casualties on the Union side; some have the highest casualties on the Confederate side; some just have the highest casualties all lumped together. Don’t let this confuse you. They were all bloody. Roughly as many Americans were killed in the Civil War as in all other U.S. involved conflicts combined.

Thing to Notice in the Brochure #2:

The lead-in for every description begins with a short recount of the soldiers camped out on the eve of battle. They all end with this line: “For many of those who slept that night, it would be their last.” The author who penned that line never wrote anything further of note, but he is now safely retired and continues to draw an excellent stipend from his royalties.

Thing to Notice in the Brochure #3:

Every battle had a plot of ground that was more hotly contested than any other. This has a name, usually along the lines of “the Devil’s Den,” “the Slaughter Pen,” “the Bloody Angle,” “the Hornet’s Nest,” etc. They are all gruesome and descriptive. Again, don’t be confused if you find six different “Bloody Ponds” and eighteen “Hell’s Half-Acres.” You are not necessarily at the same park.

Thing to Notice in the Brochure #4:

Every battle was a crucial point of the war. Had the outcome of any battle been reversed--had the South won Shiloh, had the North won Chancellorsville--the war would have ended right then. Somehow every battle turned out just as needed to prolong the thing another year or two.

You may also see the oldest standing memorial of some sort-or-other at a number of parks, the largest mass grave, the longest row of massed cannon, etc., etc., according to the brochures. Be assured, the battles were all distinct. The soldiers didn’t fight in one spot, pack up, and stage the battle again the next state over. So read something about each battle before you go--preferably by Shelby Foote or Bruce Catton--and use the brochures for the extra credit mentioned above.

And watch out for ticks. The brochures don’t mention tick fever being a problem during the war, but it certainly is now.

http://www.npca.org/cultural_diversity/battlefields/

http://www.pbs.org/civilwar/war/facts.html

Life of Hardin Vol. VI, No. 1

2009-10-05T10:15:00.003-05:00

You Get What You Pay For

You get what you pay for. That is true. Mostly. (Except that the phrase is grammatically incorrect. You cannot end a sentence with a preposition; i.e., for. It should read--if the person who first coined it had any grammar training or respect for the English language--”You get that for which you pay.”

But that doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as well, and the person who first let it slip more than likely uttered it in a moment of frustration and despair after he had passed up the thoroughbreds at the name-brand horse dealer and purchased, instead, the half-price nag with no return policy and no warrantee from the livery stable down the street. Said nag then whinnied and keeled over dead on the way to the ranch, breaking the new owners’ leg and pinning him under her dead carcass for an hour and a half in the hot sun.

“You get what you pay for,” he uttered as his neighbor, who happened to pass by at that moment on his way to borrow a cup of sugar dragged him out from under and wrapped a splint around his leg. We will forgive him his grammar error in the moment of weakness. So . . .)

You get what you pay for. That is true in the same way most adages are true: It is a good rule of thumb. Sometimes you get more than you pay for, if you have planned and looked, and finally find the name brand that should cost you X but instead will only cost you 1/2X at the moment. Then you get more than you pay for.

Getting more than you pay for is a good thing. Except when it comes to restaurants. Nicer, more expensive restaurants, to be specific. They know the saying as well as you. They know that people expect to get what they pay for, and so if they are going to charge double, they had better make sure they have satisfied the proverb. And food, after all, is food. If it is pleasing to the palate and satisfies the hunger at eight dollars, what more can be done to add to that--to make up the difference and give you what you pay for--at sixteen dollars. So they try too hard.

Take my own example. I was treated* to a meal at a nicer restaurant (by nicer I mean every meal on the menu is over ten dollars and they turn out the lights on you and expect you to eat by feel). I ordered chicken fingers, which I normally do, and a salad. I got what was paid for. The chicken was good. The salad was good. But there was something more to it. It stayed with me longer than a regular three dollar side-salad. It stayed with me leaving the restaurant. It stayed with me in the car. It stayed with me that night when I arrived home. I tried to chase it out with water, with milk, with ice cream, with Tums. But it would not go. It was not a three dollar salad, it was a nine dollar salad, and intended to live up to its price tag. It stayed with me in bed, asleep, and woke me in the morning. I finally drowned it with coffee. It could not live through that.

So beware. You get what you pay for. It is advice to buy quality, but it is also a warning. Don’t pay twenty dollars for something that you should have bought at Chik-fil-a for six.

*I am grateful to those who treated me, and this article does not indicate ingratitude toward their generosity.

2008-02-09T12:44:00.000-06:00

Life of Hardin Vol. V, No. 4

Vultures Everywhere

“Wherever there is a carcass, there the vultures will gather.” They have gathered around me. I have felt the dark wind from their feathers, smelt the putrid stench of rotting flesh from their hooked beaks, for over a week as they circle above me.

Okay, so not real vultures. But a reasonable facsimile. I am leaving this country, Paraguay, and moving back to the U.S. Like any moving day, my wife and I are having a sale. Or were having a sale. It is over. It is all gone. Still the vultures gather.

We ran an ad in the paper for six days. For sale: washer and dryer, stereo, treadmill, television, DVD player. Priced to sell. And how. We got calls before the paper hit the streets. The first day it ran, a man called for the television. He came by, paid cash for it, then bought the DVD player and stereo at the urging of what we thought was his daughter (turns out she was his concubine). The next day we sold the treadmill and the washer/dryer. That’s it. Nothing left. Yet the calls still came in a flood.

“I’m calling about the advertisement in the paper.”

“The one with the t.v. and all?”

“That’s the one.”

“Yeah, it’s all sold.”

“All of it.”

“Every bit of it.”

And then, every single call continued in some way similar to this.

Caller: “That’s a shame. I wanted the belt (meaning treadmill).”

“Yep, it’s gone.”

“Was it nice? Was it clean?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, was it new? Was it a deal?”

“What do you care? It’s sold!”

Then some of them continued this way.

“Well, do you have anything else?”

“What?”

“Do you have anything else to sell? Don’t you have another stereo? Or television? Housewares? How about home decorations? (A man asked that one.)”

The men who came to buy the treadmill saw the television ready for delivery. “That’s already sold?”

“Yep. All gone. Hundred and fifty dollars.”

“What a deal! It’s gorgeous. What a shame. You don’t want to sell it to me? What about that other stereo there? Want to sell it?”

“Nope.”

“What a shame? You sure?”

And so on. We cancelled the ad after the second day, then fled the house. We returned after six hours. Our caller ID showed 36 calls. We got a buzz on the apartment phone. Someone was downstairs. She wanted the washer. “How did you get this address?”

“Señor Alfonso gave it to me.” (The guy who bought the t.v.)

“We told him the washer was sold.”

“Can’t I just come up and look at it? Don’t you have something else to sell?”

“NO!”

I started to get ugly about it. People called. I told them it was all gone. They asked, “Was it pretty?”

I said: “Oh, man, it was beautiful. Used maybe twice. Had all the paperwork. Not a speck of dust on it. I would have lowered the price for you. And it was already a deal! What a shame!”

People called. They asked: “Don’t you have anything else for sale?”

I said: “Well, I’ve got a couple of commodes. Got some used light bulbs I won’t be taking with me. Half of an overripe banana I didn’t eat. I guess I could sell you the paint on the walls.”

I actually didn’t say that. Somebody would have taken me up on it. But I did think about running another add: ALL SOLD--the washer and dryer, stereo, treadmill, television, DVD player. All great deals. Too bad. So sad. Don’t call this number anymore.

But I didn’t. And the calls have stopped. So if you want any of that stuff IT’S ALL GONE SO LEAVE ME ALONE!

2008-02-09T12:42:00.000-06:00

Life of Hardin Vol. V, No. 3

On and Off-Broadway

As a rule, I do not care for musicals. I can’t put my finger on just one little thing about them that turns me off. Is it the air of artsyness? The disjointed necessity of breaking into song at various intervals? The annoying mediocrity of the songs themselves, which are rarely catchy, have hard to remember melodies, and lyrics forced to conform to the story whether they are good and rhyme or not?

Oh, no! I’ve lost my ring!

--You’ve lost your ring?

Yes, lost my ring.

--He’s lost his ring! He’s lost his ring!

I do not know where I may find it! My wits have come up to their brink--

--Perhaps you dropped it in the . . . commode.

So on and so forth. I can’t put my finger on just one thing. Whatever it is, I am not a fan of musicals. Oh, there are exceptions to every rule. Astaire-Rogers. Singing in the Rain. The Sound of Music, although I have seen it through once in 25 years. But I tend to know whether I will like one or not if I hum the tune to one of the songs later, or if I can make up new lyrics to the song.

For instance, this little classic from Annie (“I Think I’m Gonna Like It Here”): “Cecille will pick out all your clothes,” becomes, “Cecille, be sure to pick your nose,” or possibly, “Cecille will take off all her clothes.”

From The Sound of Music (“Maria”): “How do you solve a problem like Maria? How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?” turns into, “How do you catch a (insert euphemism for gas) and paint it green?”

Those are the types of things that make a musical more enjoyable for me. Now, on to a comparative review of two recent musical productions to which I had tickets. One is a little show called Into the Woods, a Tony® Award winner by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine. The other is Spamalot, a current Broadway show based on the comedy of Monty Python.

The production I saw of Into the Woods was performed in a small municipal theatre in Paraguay sponsored in part by the Embassy of the United States. The performers were Spanish-speaking English students from a local English school. Understandably, I did not expect much. However, the performance was enjoyable. The sets were adequate. The performers had very little accent (except for Little Red Riding Hood, who, while very energetic, could not carry a tune in her little basket, and whose main function in the show was to jump around while not bursting out of her dress. She could not sing, but was very entertaining). The direction was excellent. The acting was not good enough to win awards, but not bad enough to notice it being bad. Although I did think the play was over after Act I, I must admit a pleasant time was had by all, and the performers received a standing ovation. (But for the life of me I can’t recall a tune from any song in the show.)

Production number two was to take place on Broadway, in Manhattan, the capital of stage musicals. I never saw it. The doors to this musical and all musicals on Broadway were closed because of some argument over how many people it takes to raise a curtain.

So, when I compare both musicals side by side, the winner is Spamalot. The producers were kind enough to close the doors and not let me see it at all, which is the best thing a musical has ever done for me. That, plus I received a refund for two tickets, which I will use instead to pay my entrance fee to DisneyWorld. Mickey does not go on strike.

2008-02-09T12:41:00.000-06:00

Life of Hardin Vol. V, No. 2

My True Love Gave to Me . . .

Christmas grows each year. The dinners increase in size and number. The presents increase in expense. The number of trees in a house goes from one to two to three or more. Likewise the aftermath--the flotsam and jetsam of wrinkled wrapping papers and ribbons, the broken ornaments, the wring of evergreen needles pooled beneath the tree, the cascade of elation and excitement--mushrooms each year. We are left like the child on Christmas morn, sprawled on the floor amongst the bright remnants of toys and boxes and paper, stuffed to the full with Christmas cheer and Christmas ham, to recover from it all. Sometimes it takes an afternoon nap. Sometimes it takes weeks of convalescence.

However, though it may seem Christmas revelries grow larger each year, that is not necessarily so. Once upon a time, the actual Christmas festivities were not held only on December 24th and 25th. They began on the 25th and ran all the way to Twelfth Night, January 6th. Imagine what it would be like if we had to celebrate Christmas every one of those 12 days.

We need look no further than the popular song to see what we would have to put up with.

• The 1st day - a partridge in a pear tree. Nice enough, and a gift that keeps on giving in the form of a fruit-bearing plant.

• The 2nd day - turtle doves. Hopefully they come with a cage.

• The 3rd day - French hens. Why are French hens better than any others?

• The 4th day - calling birds. Already a dangerous trend emerges. Must each successive gift be larger than the last?

• The 5th day - gold (or golden) rings. My wife has pointed out that any time a man sings, it is “golden” rings, and any time a woman sings the rings are actually gold. Although I’m not sure “golden” precluded the rings being pure gold, I can see the necessity of conserving resources to buy presents for all these twelve days.

• The 6th and 7th days - geese a-laying and swans a-swimming. More fowl. One of these true loves certainly has a fowl fetish. It is a foul fetish for fowl, and one of the two true loves needs to put a stop to it. The girl has collected a barnyard full of cackling birds, and I would not want to spend my 12 days of Christmas anywhere near, what with the poop and feathers and calling birds and all.

• The 8th day - maids a-milking. It makes no mention of the cows, so the question is, what are they milking, or are they simply deranged?

• The 9th day - ladies dancing. Precursor to the modern dance troop, now popular at sporting events. Probably the earliest cited example of a gift giver giving something they actually want for themselves.

• The 10th day - lords a-leaping. More deranged people. Obviously running out of ideas. Today when we run out of ideas we give gifts from the “executive line” that Penney’s and Sears have on their Christmas display tables, like AM/FM letter openers and universal remote/corkscrews.

• The 11th and 12th days - pipers piping and drummers drumming. I have no doubt these were given to drown out the sound of the birds.
There is also some debate as to whether the true love gave one set of each gift, or a new set each new day. Either way it sounds exhausting.

So you see, we have it not so bad as it seems nowadays. It could be much worse. Though I am just now recovered enough to look back and reflect on my holiday frivolity, I do not have to worry about throttling a lord a-leaping or wringing the neck of a goose a-laying or a calling bird for supper. My turkey leftovers are long gone.

2008-02-09T12:40:00.000-06:00

Life of Hardin Vol. V, No. 1

Feeling Hot, Hot, Hot

The power went off this afternoon. There was no storm. There was no lightning. No giant albatross crashed into a transformer. No atomic sea monster (e.g., Godzilla) arose from the Paraguay River to chew the power lines.

It just went off. Poof.

Back home this would not be a big deal. Go outside if it is daytime. If it is night, light a candle. Read a book. Go to bed at 9 o’clock.

Not here. Not in Paraguay. Not in a country often called the “Green Hell.” When the power goes off here in the middle of January, you sit, in the dark, and be very, very still.

Just this week I left the frigid 40 degree weather of Tennessee and stepped off a plane into the 105 degree, 90% humidity of Asuncion. That was in the airport. That was before I even peeked my head out of the shade to test the sizzle of the sun. I rushed to a car and turned the air conditioner on. I rushed from the car to my apartment and turned on the wall-mounted A/C. It’s a good one. It can bring the temperature in my living room down to 72 degrees--if it is after 8 at night and I close the doors to the other rooms.

The only fault of this air conditioner is that it doesn’t work when the power goes out. The indoor temperature climbs five degrees in the next five minutes. In thirty minutes 80 degrees will be a memory. In an hour the mercury scrapes ninety, and I will be in a shirtless pool on the tile floor.

How does anyone get anything done in this? It is impossible to eat. Food loses flavor. Stomachs lose their appetites. I choked down my supper just to give me the energy and will to make it through the night. But I didn’t enjoy it.

No one moves. The barefoot beggar children never venture from their shady trees next to the road. Coins are molten at that temperature. Pedestrians linger in traffic, walk in the road if there is more shade, immune to the imminent threat of death. Better a few moments of cool respite before eternity than a languishing torture before. I myself, in the dark at my dinner table, try to breathe as slowly as possible for fear I might work up a sweat. I don’t blink at all.

It is too hot to think. That is evident. No thoughts occur here between the months of December and March. I am not even sure I am writing this at the moment, or if I only imagine it in the waking stupor of heat stroke.

It is too hot to bathe. Pool water smolders like a boiling pot. Cold showers are a sauna. I watered a plant on my balcony and watched it wither and die the moment the water scalded its roots.

It is too hot to have children. It is too hot to conceive children. But that gets done here anyway.

Now if you will excuse me I must go and mop the kitchen floor. It seems my wife just melted. I hope the freezer is still cold enough to solidify her again.

2008-02-09T12:39:00.000-06:00

Life of Hardin Vol. IV, No. 27

A Foot By Any Other Name

We are smack dab in the middle of football season yet again. Both of them. American football has had the teams of the National Collegiate Athletic Association raving out of control for over two months now, with no ranked team safe from an upset. The NFL is up in arms arguing over whether a team can still complete a season undefeated. And South American soccer--better known as football in every country in the world besides the U.S.--is, as usual, playing every game with a complete regiment of police in riot gear guarding the gates.

Yes, I know. Another article about soccer. But I still wrestle with this phenomenon. It is so bound up in South American culture it is impossible to escape. I gave it every chance to grow on me. Like watching Citizen Kane a second time. Like eating an extra piece of cantaloupe. Like buying another goldfish when the first dies in two days. I just can’t do it.

There really is not much to it. Twenty-two people run up and down a huge, well-groomed pasture and try to boot a ball into a net so huge it should be impossible to guard, and yet score maybe once a game. It is an exercise in practiced futility. It is like eating tapioca pudding with a fork. White rice with chop sticks. Gruel with a coffee stirrer. I think that is why they need S.W.A.T. teams at every contest. Eventually you get tired of sucking gruel and stick your face down in it, then sling it all over the kitchen until someone older and more mature comes in to restore order with force.

Not that they don’t try to spice it up. They say they have plays, but they are all variations of two things: 1) Pass the ball to me and I’ll kick it in, or 2) Kick the ball in when I pass it to you. They make up arbitrary rules like don’t run in front of the other players, don’t use your hands, and don’t kick people. None of this fools me. I know a track meet when I see it, even if the runners have to kick a ball, can’t decide which way to run, and never get to the finish line.

Of course soccer players say the same things about football and basketball and baseball. Basketball I agree. The only wrinkle there is the dribble and the hoop, but it is mainly soccer for tall, coordinated people. Baseball is in a league of its own, and is not bad-mouthed so much as it is gaped at and held in awe. Football, however, receives much of the criticism, mainly because it carries the same name.

It should not be called football, so I have been told on many occasions. You don’t even have to kick the ball with your feet. Soccer you can only kick the ball with your feet. That is real football.

To anyone who says this, I quote this scripture: “Cast out the beam out of thine own eye.” Football was popularized and named in England. And though the word “foot” has zero meaning in Spanish, they continue to say “football.” This is the same thing as if an American were to call baseball “phblat.” It signifies nothing, therefore Spanish speakers have no grounds for arguing for the moniker of football. If they called it piebol, then I could see it. (Pie means foot in Spanish, but is pronounced pee-yeah).

Here is my wisdom. We cut the name in half, kill it so that neither game can have it, and rename both with more apt descriptions. We’ll call American football throwball, or catchball, or runball.

And we’ll call soccer boring.

2008-02-09T12:38:00.000-06:00

Life of Hardin Vol. IV, No. 26

Does a Body Good

It’s funny, the things you take for granted when you do without them for a while. Usually it’s a little thing. Take, for instance, milk. I love milk. I used to drink milk like some people drink water. I could go through a gallon myself in a couple of days. Strong bones. Strong teeth. Good for you.

Now I’m not talking about that skim milk mess. That is not milk. It’s nothing more than white colored water. I’m at least halfway convinced they just fill the jug from the tap and add a little white coloring, then make a fortune off of it. You won’t find any calves drinking that watery knock-off. They’d spew it from their mouths. No, I’m talking about good ol’ two percent. Real cow juice. Stuff that coats as it goes down. Sticks to the glass. Got enough body to it to wash down about anything. I can’t see how we don’t have more choking deaths each year, people trying to eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and washing them down with skim. It’s a health hazard.

It’s also funny the little things that really get under your skin. Those little things that are okay at first, but they’re just ever so slightly different. After a while they just drive you completely mad. Take, for instance, milk. The milk situation in Paraguay is in a sad state of affairs. First off, there is no two percent. You have a choice of whole, or skim. Now I am not against whole, but I can’t drink it often. It’s a treat once in a while, when there’s a swallow left after making ice cream. And my views on skim have already been made public.

Second--and this is the worst part--the milk does not come in a jug. It comes in bags. Bags! One liter bags. You have to cut the top corners of the bags and pour them into a pitcher. I can go through a liter by myself in a day if the urge hits me. I am sick of pouring a new bag ever time I turn around. I don’t want to have to clip the edges of a sack of milk every time I want a drink. I want to peel off that little plastic rim, take off the top and drink.

I am not sure why they insist on putting the milk in bags. My only guess is that a bag is closer to an udder and makes you think the milk is fresher. They even have big, huge billboard advertisements with cows on them, standing up showing their udders. The caption reads: “The most fun part of the cow.” (I have recreated the advertisement below. Really. This is exactly what they look like.)

I like milk, but I am not ready to belly up to an udder. That may be fine for young cows, but not for me. I just am not to that point. Nor do I want to have that sensation, which is the only good reason for these udder-bags. I do not want my milk straight from an udder. I do not want the sensation of having my milk straight from an udder. Although it may very well be the most fun part of a cow, I do not want the chore of milking an udder (or an udder-bag) every time I eat a chocolate chip cookie, or a piece of chocolate cake, or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I just want my milk in a nice, two gallon plastic jug. It’s just a small thing. But you know how these small things can wear on you.

2008-02-09T12:37:00.001-06:00

Life of Hardin Vol. IV, No. 25

If I Was a Poor Man

I never gave much thought to the idea that I might be homeless one day. I never had to worry about it, or ever doubted that I would have a roof over my head, food to eat, and a good pair of fingernail clippers. Lately, however, I have given myself over to a fair amount of worry about it.

There are many people in Paraguay who live with little or no shelter from the elements. Their meager income results from either begging at street corners or washing car windshields with dirty rags. I see them every day, scores of them. I never knew so many destitute existed in the world. My hometown had a total of one that I ever knew. No one knew for certain his real name. Some guessed it was Douglas Kirkpatrick, but we all called him Cool Breeze. He refused to take any handout. If you offered him a ride, he would curse at you and say if he wanted to ride, he would buy a car. It is a wonderful country where the homeless can buy cars if they want.

However, after leaving that environment for this, I began to see just how easy it might be to become homeless. I got worried. I looked up numbers. Some estimates put the homeless rate in South America at 50%. Statistically, either I or my wife should be homeless. I also began to worry just what caused homelessness. Was it genetic? My father at one time wanted to be a hobo. Though he claims he idolized the freedom and travel of a hobo, I still say it is a fancy way to say “bum.” Might I one day be seized by this same urge to ride rail cars and smoke the stubs of cigars with a toothpick?

At this point the circumstance feels too possible to ignore. Accordingly, I have given much deliberation to what I would do. First, I think I would live in South America. The United States has too many job opportunities, and homelessness is given a bad name because of it. South America is not that way. It is much more respectable. Also the climate in South America is more conducive to being homeless. Without a house it would be difficult to find warmth in times of cold, and therefore I would find the warmest climate around, maybe right on top of the equator. Many homeless, I believe, have already discovered this, as indicated by the large numbers of them on the southern continent.

Next, I would prioritize my life. Warmth being taken care of, food would come next. I have heard a number of people complain about the hygiene habits of the homeless-- they don’t take baths, they don’t use deodorant, they have bad teeth, they just don’t take care of themselves. I feel it is not so much a question of self-hygiene or self-respect as it is one of priorities. With limited funds, food is priority one. You can’t eat a stick of Old Spice deodorant, and I would rather be smelly than hungry. Along with the food I would buy hand sanitizer. I have to eat, and I can’t do that if my hands are grubby. Any money I had left over would then go to a toothbrush and toothpaste so that I could continue to eat, then to toilet paper, then to clothing when needed (although my ingenious decision to live in the tropics lessens the need for much clothing), and so on, down the list of hygiene articles.

That’s about it. Pretty simple. But I do think I would take Cool Breeze’s suggestion and buy a car. I think I’d get tired of walking, and it would keep my shoes from wearing out.

2008-01-23T10:36:00.000-06:00

Life of Hardin Vol. IV, No. 24

The Truth of Inconvenience

Ten years ago cell phones were a fad. They were big and expensive. People carried them as a sign of prestige. Now we can’t do without them. We can find anyone, anywhere, anytime. Convenient.

Fifteen years ago microwaves were a luxury. If you could afford one, you could cook supper in 15 minutes. You could re-heat leftovers in 10. You could make popcorn in 5 without a fireplace. Convenient.

Twenty years ago VCR’s beat out Beta machines. Beta was inconvenient. They couldn’t record. A VCR could record any television show. You didn’t have to be in a certain spot at a certain time. You were free of network schedules. You could watch what you wanted, when you wanted. Convenient.

We are a people trained to convenience. We make things that we don’t have to monitor, that can do the job faster, that can do it now, the moment we decide, because later we’ve got something else to do. We make things that will let us do what we want, when we want. Then we make things that let us do all those things faster to free us up even more. We make conveniences more convenient. We trump a VCR with TiVo. We trump a cell phone with an iPhone. We trump Blockbuster with On-Demand movies. We trump On-Demand movies with the VUDU set-top digital movie box that puts over 5,000 movies at your fingertips. We’ve even trumped the convenience store with Wal-Mart.

What inconvenience will be cured next? Eating? Sleeping? Going to the bathroom? Birthing babies? Paraguay’s already solved that one. Everyone schedules C sections. The maternity ward is packed full every Saturday morning with happy moms, dads, and doctors who didn’t have to get up in the middle of the night, and squalling babies who came out too soon. Then they feed the kid, pierce its ears if it’s a girl, and stick it in an incubator until puberty. You don’t get more convenient than that.

But we’ve made things too convenient. We can no longer use inconvenience as an excuse. For example. Then, in the age of inconvenience: “Could you take out the trash?” “Later. I’m watching the game.” Now: “Pause it with TiVo and take out the trash.”

Then: “What do you want to watch?” “It’s raining, so the antenna is only picking up CBS. I guess we’ll watch I Love Lucy.” Now: “We’ve got over 5,000 movies to choose from. Which one do you want?” “I don’t know. Which one do you want?” “I don’t know. You pick.” “I can’t decide. Just get what you want.” “I don’t know what I want. What do you want?” Ad nauseum.

The worst. The phone rings. “I’m sorry. He’s indisposed at the moment.” Now: “Sure. I’ll hand him the cordless.”

The problem is, we’ve convenienced ourselves right out of convenience. We’ve gone too far, hit the wall, turned around, and gotten right back into inconvenience again. Why do I want to eat re-warmed, soggy pizza? Why do I want to read the summaries of 5,000 B-movies when I could just watch “Star Wars” again? Why do I want to be found on a cell phone 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, even if I’m at the movies or reading in the “library”? The answer is I don’t. Yet I spend my time keeping up with these conveniences, and I no longer have an excuse to just sit and do nothing. Everything is so convenient that I can get up and do it right now. We’ve eliminated inconvenience. And that’s what I call inconvenient.

2007-11-06T13:57:00.000-06:00

Life of Hardin Vol. IV, No. 23

Notes on a Surgery

--I guess I’ll have knee surgery. So what if it’s been nine years since I tore my ACL? I didn’t have the time before. I’m finally tired of putting this thing back into socket. Besides, it’s cheaper here in Paraguay. The question is how to find a doctor.

First Doctor visits
--This doctor knows what he’s doing. But I don’t think he wants me to know what he’s doing. He keeps saying, “We’ll cut you open. We’ll cut you open.” Don’t I have other options? What about acupuncture? Herbal remedies? It’s like pulling teeth to get any info out of him. Is he a spy or something?
--Second visit. What’s his secretary trying to pull? She charged me an extra ten dollars this time and told me it was the same as last time. Oh, yeah? We’ll here’s the receipt from last time. What do you think about that? I thought that’d change your mind. What do you mean change? Is that the only reason you overcharged me? Because you didn’t have change?!? I want a second opinion. AND a second secretary.

New doctor
--This place is nicer. Doctor tells me everything. And his secretary says every visit is a flat rate of 20 bucks.

Getting ready
--Found a cane. Got a nice big ball of stone on top of it. I’ll be the terror of the streets. See if anybody tries to wash my windshield now. I’ll knock ‘em out.
--This is crazy. I’ve got to buy my own surgical screws and rent the surgical tools.
--My conversation with every place I call about the screws: “I want biodegradable screws. I don’t want titanium. I don’t care if everyone else here uses them. I don’t want my knee to be a weather barometer for the rest of my life.” Achy=rain. Creaky=fog. Stiff=cold’s a comin’.
--Found a place with the screws. But I just saw the delivery box for the surgical tools wrapped in a rag that’s been stuck in the top of an oil can.

Surgery
--I scream when the nurse comes in the room and tell her not to hurt me. I scream when he hangs up the saline bag. I scream when she produces an IV needle. I keep my mouth shut while she shoves it in. It’s boring in bed. I’ve got to do something to entertain myself.
--She shaves my knee. No cream. No soap. Dry. Dry as a bone. She uses some razor I’ve never seen. It doesn’t nick me once. Why don’t they sell it for faces? Gillette probably lobbies to keep them off the market.
--I have my wife write “WRONG” on my left knee with a Sharpie. The nurses think I’ve tattooed it.
--Off to surgery. Flat on my back. Can’t see where we’re going. They really should put pictures on hospital ceilings.
--Surgery’s not so bad. I can’t feel my legs. I keep looking up to make sure they’re there and they keep pushing my head back down.

Post-op
--Quit pumping that pain killer in me! I don’t want to be a junkie. After I bark at the first nurse, they don’t give me any more pain meds.
--Middle of the night. They didn’t send me home, so in protest I climb out of bed and wander down the hall. The nurse at the station asks, “Where do you think you’re going?” “I’m walkin’ here!”
--The nurses keep coming in wanting to give me a sponge bath. They never offer me any money, so I turn them down.

Home again
--Not so bad. As long as the swelling keeps going down the knee moves and feels fine. But I can’t get it wet yet.
--Surgery’s a breeze. The hard part is showering your backside while keeping a leg stuck straight up in the air.

2007-10-19T08:11:00.000-05:00

Life of Hardin Vol. IV, No. 22

The Better Part of Valor

Mark Twain said that the human race is a race of cowards. I feel confident that he never visited Paraguay. Had he done so he would have excluded the Paraguayan from his sentiment.

Like any human being, a Paraguayan has a number of character flaws. Lack of courage is not among them. This is historically demonstrated in the statistics from the War of the Triple Alliance (1866-1870). In this war Paraguay fought against Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay at the same time. Three-forths of all Paraguayan men died in the war because they were too courageous to stop. A monument to their courage now stands at the gateway to the capital city: a Paraguayan soldier sprawls dead at the feet of a Paraguayan woman and a Paraguayan boy with rifle in hand. The engraving declares, “We will fight on.”

We need look no further for the continuing evidence of this courage than the Paraguayan pedestrian. He takes his life in his hands every day without the slightest twinge of cowardice. When I cross the street here, I wait for the change of lights and then scamper toward the other side like a Southern squirrel. It takes a good five minutes for my heat palpitations to stop.

A Paraguayan pedestrian has no such trouble because his heart knows no fear. He strolls across the street like the Pink Panther. He does this with the light or against the light. It makes no difference to him. The metal behemoths that bear down on him might as well be a flock of butterflies. The Paraguayan is confident that the cars that hurtle toward him will either stop or simply break down before they can do him any harm. He never speeds his gate, never breaks into a desperate run for the safety of the sidewalk. In fact, he rarely looks to see if cars are coming or not, but walks headlong across a lane and thereby proves his worth. The only notice a Paraguayan can give to an oncoming car is one tiny disdainful glance over his shoulder once he is halfway across the street. Any more than this and he will be branded a coward and blackballed.

This same courage is displayed by the street corner vendors. They dance in and out of traffic with their baskets of fruit, often standing between two lanes as cars roar away from a stop light. Even as the vendors sit on the curb they display their courage by hanging their bare legs a good three feet into the nearest lane while they face the opposite direction. Cars swerve around them. And if their legs ever twitch, their vending license is revoked and they live forever in shame.

This is no false bravado that wilts in the face of real danger. I have put it to the test. When a Paraguayan crosses in front of me at his leisurely gate, I often rev my engine, blare my horn, and aim as close to him as I can to test his mettle. Never once have I been rewarded with even a surprised glance. But I am certain I have aided many a young man to prove his mettle in front of his peers.

I feel no shame in saying I do not have the courage of a Paraguayan pedestrian. No one can have that kind of valor and live long. Alas, he has no discretion, and I have it in spades. He is a glorious creature, but I will be here long after he has vanished from the earth.

2007-10-13T15:51:00.000-05:00

Life of Hardin Vol. IV, No. 21

Paternal Instincts

Before anything else, I should say that I love my niece. She is cute, funny, smart, imaginative, sweet, thoughtful, well-mannered, and for a two-year-old has a minimum of bad behavior. I must say this because I have been her babysitter for three days, and though I love being an uncle, I pray that I never become a father.

It is possible that this comes simply from some character fault on my part. But I doubt it. After this I can understand how people become parents. From the outside looking in it appears to be both fun and fulfilling. It is a natural instinct to want a child. What I cannot understand is how people ever become parents for a second time. After the first one, when do they even find the time to conceive a second child? I haven’t had time for one thing other than watching the one little girl who isn’t even mine. Even the bathroom isn’t sacred. I have locked myself in on more than one occasion, hoping for a respite, only to hear a knock at the door and a still, small voice ask, “Whaya doin’, Dosh?”

How does anyone have time to get anything done at all? I have not had more than one hour total time to myself in the past 72 hours. That includes sleep time. I must sleep now with a stuffed bunny and two feet in my face. If I am absent for five minutes at any point, something will be broken, torn, discolored, missing, or injured. If I make an unexpected move, the still, small voice asks me, “Whereya goin’, Dosh?” And I obediently sit and sing another chorus of “Let’s Go Fly a Kite.”

The more difficult question to answer is not how, but why? Why, after a taste of one, would people have two? Or more? Three days and all thoughts of an outside world are gone. World War III could begin and end, and I would have no inkling of the fact because I was too busy keeping sippy cups refilled with juice. How is anyone capable of any sort of imaginative thought? I have no thoughts in my head except, “Don’t. Stop. Wait. Come here. Go to sleep. One more bite.” Ad infinitum. It is a marvel to me that we as a society have become as technologically advanced as we are while having children at the rate we do.

I have been told before I would make a good father. I believe this theory to be proven as ludicrous as the flatness of the world and the sun’s circling of the earth. I am constantly outsmarted by a two-year-old. Any time I give an order that is not liked, she simply changes the subject and says, “I gotta go pee-pee in the potty.” I cannot ignore that. It may be a lie. I know that it is in all probability a lie. Yet if there is any chance, I must keep the child from wetting her pants. When I take her to the bathroom, I become completely useless. I can get her on the pot, but I cannot get her off the pot and cleaned. I cannot handle it. I am rendered null and void by my inability to wipe another person. NOT father material.

I love my niece. She brings joy to my life and the lives of those around her. I would not trade her for anything in the world. And yet after three days, when she returned to the care of her parents, I looked at my wife through bloodshot eyes and said, “Remember, when they’re ours, we can’t take them back.”

2007-10-06T10:19:00.001-05:00

Life of Hardin Vol. IV, No. 20

Salud de hombres

(Men’s Health)

September 2007

in today’s issue:

Best Foods for the Paraguayan Man

Mr. Paraguay Competition: Winners and Losers

Feature Article: Top Exercises for the Busy Paraguayan

(article excerpt)

If you’re like me, it’s hard to find time for proper exercise. Monday through Saturday you get up at five, take a 45-minute bus ride to work, get off at six, and ride another 45-minutes home. Not much time left for anything but meals and sleep. And forget about Saturday night. That is reserved strictly for cerveza. Some guys just give up and leave the perfect body to the professional bodybuilders.

But don’t fear! Salud de Hombres has done the legwork for you. We sent our experts on a four-week trial to find those exercises that give you the most bang for the buck without losing time out of your busy day. We narrowed it down to five and put them in order of least effective to most. In other words, we saved the best for last.

Clubbing. Okay, it sounds crazy. It surprised us, too. But when we thought about it, the benefits became obvious. Most guys dance while they are at a club. Even if it’s just a shuffle or shimmy, you burn a few extra calories. You may ask, “Don’t you add them back drinking beer?” One would think. But we found that guys who club order the big beers, the magnum sizes that come with their own giant cozies. It’s a full workout to lift one of those to your lips. Multiply that by how many drinks you take, and you’ve got a serious superset. Add this to the fact that a guy in a club is awake burning cals instead of sleeping, and you’ve put in a decent workout. So don’t stay home on those Saturday nights, guys. Get out there and club.

Asado. Some of you may be homebodies. Hey, we all are sometimes. We just don’t have the energy to get out to the clubs every Saturday night. So throw a party of your own. Besides the benefits mentioned above, when you throw a party at your own house, you do all the work. We found that guys who did the cooking for their asado burned loads of calories standing over the hot coals. It’s like a sauna in there. And with the prep work of carrying all that raw meat back and forth you’ve got a real man’s workout.

Walk to and from work. What could be simpler than this? Buses are easy, but you spend money and that chipa so’o you ate for breakfast (all carbs) goes right to fat. So take a hike! If you need an extra push, see our next suggestion.

Pilates. Yes, Pilates is generally for women. And nowhere is that macho sentiment more at home than in Paraguay. Yet that’s exactly the point. The Pilates gyms are kind enough to have all plate-glass windows for walls. The guys we studied didn’t take the Pilates classes, but they made a point to walk past them to and from work and during lunch hour once or twice. So find your nearest Pilates class and do some sightseeing. Now that’s motivation for an extra cardio power walk.

Those are all great, but they don’t even come close to our top workout for busy guys. If you’re really crunched for time, try this one.

Dodge traffic. Ever try to cross the street in Asuncion? If it took you more than 2 seconds, then you’re not reading this because you’re squashed flat. Smart pedestrians cross in front of the Beamers and Mercedes. They know they’ll stop rather than ding their fender. But you can get in some great wind sprints if you dash in front of those old Fiats or Nissans. Give it a week. We promise you’ll be thinner one way or another.

2007-10-06T10:15:00.000-05:00

Life of Hardin Vol. IV, No. 19

Big Tipper

When it comes to leaving tips, I have never been a cheerful giver. I never saw the joy in leaving extra money when a restaurant owner should have paid sufficiently in the first place. I am now struck with a twinge of conscience when I think of my several friends who worked for tips and often offered to dance on the tables of their customers just for an extra two bits.

But I am not struck too badly. I left the suggested percentage. Just not cheerfully. Unless of course I ate at Logan’s and the waitress kept me stock full of yeast rolls. That type of waiter earns special honor.

My displeasure in tipping came mostly from my failure to see the joy in it. I have seen it now. Paraguay has helped somewhat with that. The percentage of gratuity here is 10% rather than 15%, so I am actually trained to overtip. That bodes well for a person who eats at the same restaurants over and over. I no longer have to rush out of restaurants before the table is cleaned. I no longer have to slip back in and sit at a different table to avoid the previous one.

There is something to be said of being a regular customer at a restaurant where you leave a large tip. A new restaurant just opened here in Paraguay. It has a nice outdoor patio. It also has good ice cream at a fair price.

My wife and I stopped in to try said ice cream. The waiter told us to sit where we wanted. So we chose a table where we could watch the world go by while we ate. The waiter brought us our double-scoop cones, and then the check as we finished. It was two dollars.

I had no change for the tip. So as much as it pained me, I was stuck leaving a dollar tip on a two dollar check. If you do the math, that comes to a 33% tip.

My wife and I returned to said restaurant another night to try their regular food. As we walked up the waiter greeted us with a smile.

“Would you like your table?” he asked. He showed us to the same place we sat on our previous visit.

The menus appeared before us in a flash. We ordered and then watched the world go by as we waited. But we didn’t have to wait long. Our waiter slid a tray in front of us.

I began to say, “We didn’t order this,” but he cut me off.

“I thought you might like to try this while you waited on your food.” He set a small bowl of chips and dip down.

It was at that moment that I can truly say I felt the joy of overtipping. It was a warm, fuzzy feeling, much the same as holding a new puppy in your arms or opening presents on Christmas morning.

I like being a regular customer. I have a usual table. I have a usual waiter. Food is placed before me without the need to order. Needless to say, I overtipped again and felt good about it.

I think I will start leaving that extra 40 cents more often.

2007-09-03T13:15:00.000-05:00

Life of Hardin Vol. IV, No. 18

The Club at the End of My Street

There are many things to do in Asunción, if you like to buy bootleg movies or sunglasses, drink strong coffee, or stare out of your back window at the haze as it rolls in off the Paraguay River. But after those two days are spent, you must find other attractions if you plan to stay longer.

You must do as the Paraguayans do, and that is to join a club.

Asunción has a variety of clubs, including but not limited to tennis clubs, gun clubs, boating clubs, exercise clubs, soccer clubs, and the like. Many of them are multi-purpose and offer a variety of available activities. The German club--where they speak Spanish--has an Olympic-sized pool, a gym, a boxing ring, a bowling alley, and a soccer field. The Yacht club has no yachts to speak of, but only launches and a few sailboats of a middling size. It also has a pool, tennis courts, and a golf course. The restaurant offers a wide view of the fiberglass dinghies as they sit in dry dock.

The king of all Paraguayan clubs is Rakiura. It has all these things mentioned above and more, except for the dinghies. It has three pools, a wave pool, and water slides. It hosts dog shows and professional tennis tournaments. My sister visited this club and refers to it as Hawaii. But that is misleading, and confuses me often, since Rakiura has no volcanoes.

The thing in common between each of these clubs is their insistence on the presence of gate security. They all have guards at the door. The job of these men is to smile and wave through anyone who smiles and waves back. I do not see how I can join any club that allows the riff-raff, such as myself, to come and go as they please.

One club I have not yet mentioned--the one club to which I would like to gain entrance so as to bring about its ruin--is located just across from my apartment building. This is Club Rowing. But they do not row. They are landlocked. They have one wading pool, which has never been filled with more water than it collects from a good rain.

They have a basketball court, which is used to host political rallies and debates. When I say political rallies, I mean fights. They begin in the morning. A crowd of people parks itself in the street so that no cars can move. A brass band begins to play music at around 8 a.m. They continue until about 5 p.m. when the debate begins. The police arrive in riot gear around 6 p.m. The debate ends at 7, and then the fight begins. It is a fine way to conduct politics. Everyone has their fair say and throws their share of punches. Then they all go home tired and happy with the disagreement settled.

What Club Rowing needs is a doorman to keep their members in. It displeases me when their little club meetings block my door. I prefer, in regard to their politics, to remain like Switzerland: completely neutral. But when I run over a few constituents on my way to the garage, they invariably believe I have taken sides. They threaten me with brickbats and beer bottles.

The last time this happened I planned to fill several balloons with cold water, carry them to the roof, and hurl them down upon the throng. Alas, by the time I took my shower, sat down and rested, it was too cold outside and I was too tired to go to the effort. I regret that I did not take pains to carry through the plan. On the next occasion I will start my own club to see it through, and, as president, will make sure that all members fulfill their duties.

2007-09-03T13:13:00.000-05:00

Life of Hardin Vol. IV, No. 17

A Day in the Life

The sights and sounds of a day in Asunción, Paraguay

I live five stories up in an apartment building. Still the cries of the chipero, the little man who sells chipa bread for breakfast, wake me up at seven. Through his electronic megaphone, mounted on his horse cart, he shouts, “Chipaaaaa! Chipa so’o caliente! Chipaaaa!” I would like to strangle him with his own chipa.

I leave my building at 8:15. The portero, or doorman, greets me with, “Buenos dias, Señor José.” My name in Spanish is “Josué” (Ho-Sway). It is hard to pronounce. I cannot pronounce it. No one can. So I am José to everyone.

Everyone except my neighborhood fruit vendor. He is on the corner every day as I leave the building. He has stacks of apples, oranges, mandarins, bananas, lemons and pineapples. He slaps me on the back. “Mi amigo, Ho-Chay.” He once asked for a gift from the U.S. I gave him a pack of dried cranberries. He may have sold them. I do not know.

Dogs bark on the street. Ugly dogs, mostly. I bark back.

A truck whips by. Black diesel fumes engulf my body, invade my lungs, burn my nose. I hold my breath until the fumes dissipate. Another truck whips by. The driver hangs his head out the window, tongue out, and twists his neck backward to watch the girl on the sidewalk. He honks. The girl, dressed in a shirt two sizes two small and form-fitting lycra pants, throws her nose in the air, spins away from him, and smiles.

The truck wheels screech. The driver’s head snaps back around. He swerves to avoid the car parked half-on, half-off the sidewalk. He honks. The car behind the truck swerves to avoid the truck as it swerves. He honks.

I return home to eat. “Mi amigo, Ho-Chay!” After lunch I leave in the car. At a stoplight a girl with a window squeegee pretends to ignore me. Suddenly she spins and tries to slap the wet sponge on my windshield. But I am ready. I have my hand out the window to stop her. So she props her arm on the car door. “Dame moneda.” Give me money. I say no. She walks around to the passenger side and pretends to drop her squeegee. Then stands back up and stares me down. The light is green. I swerve into the far lane and dodge the glass bottle she placed under my tire.

I stop at a gas station. The attendant asks, “Quer- que limp- el vid-?” and never completes a word. He washes my windshield. I pay him for the gas, tip him for the wash. I say, “Mucha- graci-.”

At night I go to the mall to hear a band play. The food court is full of Paraguayans. They cheer and clap their hands to the rhythm of “The Old Chisum Trail,” sung by the group The Wyoming Pals, from Wyoming.

I return home for the night. I can barely drive down the street. A crowd has commandeered it to listen to the concert in the club across the street. A small market, sprung miraculously from the sidewalk for the event, sells beer and rank hotdogs. I try to drive. “La calle esta cerrado!” The road is closed, they shout. But I live here, I shout back.

I lie down in bed. The light from a bare bulb in a house below shines in my eyes. The music from the club shakes the window, pounds my ears. Thump. Thump thump THUMP. Thump Thump THUMP. The same song plays for an hour. Thump. Thump thump THUMP. Thump Thump THUMP. I put my hands over my ears. My heart says Thump. Thump thump THUMP. Thump Thump THUMP. I let out a hard sigh.

My wife opens one eye. She looks at me. “Shh. I’m trying to rest.”

2007-08-05T12:40:00.000-05:00

Life of Hardin Vol. IV, No. 14

My Friend Guapo*

“I can eat fifty eggs.” Or so said Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke. And he did it, too; but he had the help of good screenwriters. I know a guy who could really do it for real, if he decided to try. Matter of fact, if I asked him, he’s probably done it already.

Allow me to introduce my friend Guapo. There isn’t a thing that can be done that he hasn’t done already or can figure out how to do. He doesn’t have a college education, and I’m willing to bet he doesn’t have very much high school under his belt. What he does have are two qualities sorely lacking in many red-blooded American males: creativity and gumption.

If you have ever seen Mary Poppins, then you know Bert. One day he is a painter. The next a kite salesman. The next a chimney sweep. But he has nothing on Guapo. I’m sure if there were any chimneys here to sweep, Guapo would be the first person sucked up one of them for an evening dance on the rooftops. Anything and everything is possible when Guapo is around.

When I visited Guapo’s house for the first time, he offered me a drink of fruit juice.

“What kind is it?” I asked.

“Acerola. It has 800 times the Vitamin C of orange juice.”

I didn’t believe it. But I’ve never seen Guapo with a cold. He’s been down and almost deathly ill with other ailments, but his nasal passages were clear.

His wife told me he ate a lot. I mentioned that he didn’t look as fat as that. But he begged to differ. “I can eat a whole lot,” he told me seriously. “One time I was so thirsty I drank four liters of milk at one sitting.”

“Four liters?” I jumped out of my chair. “That’s more than a gallon. Don’t you know that nobody can drink more than a gallon of milk in an hour?”

He wrinkled his eyebrows. “I’m telling you for real. And I drank liters, not gallons.” That was the time Guapo beat the gallon challenge before he even knew about it.

Creativity and gumption.

Guapo runs a frame shop. He doesn’t do the painting now, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t. He used to be famous, or at least almost. There is a famous painter here named Burtt. Guapo used to paint the pictures for him, and Burtt just signed his name to them, so I’m told.

Creativity and gumption.

One week Guapo decided to buy a computer. He went to the store and found out he was short on the necessary cash. While there he found a digital camera/photo printer package and bought that instead. He took it home and liked it so much that he bought two more. Then he went to the Expo, which is like a state fair except on a national level. He opened a photo booth, like the ones you see in amusement parks that nobody ever goes to, and charged a dollar a photo (policemen and Indians got a discount). People lined up all the way around the corner to have their picture taken and printed out ready to go in one minute. Guapo burned up two printers, he had them working so fast. Nobody cared about the exhibits, but they all wanted their picture taken. Guapo made more money in the last three days than people make here in three months. Those amusement park places could learn something there.

I don’t have time to tell you about when Guapo had a castle built on his patio. It stuck out from under his carport overhang like a big blister. But I saw it with my own eyes. And he did it all with creativity and gumption.

*Not his real name.

2007-07-23T21:14:00.001-05:00

Life of Hardin Vol. IV, No. 13

Looking Out My Back Door

When you look out my back door--two panes of sliding glass panels, five floors up an apartment building in Asunción, Paraguay--you will see the downtown skyline of South America’s oldest surviving city. If you catch it at the right time, you can watch a rose-golden sun blaze down through the open windows of the Wilson Building. The rest of the time you just see a light haze.

Somewhere over amongst the edifices is the presidential palace, where he doesn’t live but only works. There’s South America’s first train station, built sometime in the 1850’s. It’s empty except for the rats and an old freight car. Behind it all the Bay of Asunción where at times is harbored the Paraguayan navy--twelve patrol boats and a battleship. (Still not too shabby for a landlocked country.)

Over the bay a ways is Argentina. I’m not sure where. They haven’t marked it very well. One day I will teach myself to survey. Then I will find the border and mark it off with chalk or a picket fence. That way when I host tourists I no longer have to stand on my balcony, wave my arm and say vaguely, “Somewhere there you are looking at Argentina.” It is impossible to impress someone with that sort of thing. What good is it to live where you can peer into another country and not impress someone with the fact of it?

Smack in the middle of my view is a sky-rise which was unfinished when I arrived and will remain unfinished as long as I am here. At times ant-sized workers swing from the rooftop crane in defiance of gravity like characters in a Disney cartoon. But most of the time they sit very still and gaze over the bay, trying to find Argentina. This building is not the only one in such a state. About half of them here are half-done.

The main feature you see, however, is trees. The city seen from above is an ocean of green dotted with the occasional island of a red tile roof. Once in a while you spot a lapacho tree, similar to a dogwood except exclusively pink and in bloom most of the year.

One of the most outstanding and admirable characteristics of the Paraguayan mentality is an innate love for trees. In other South American cities concrete has taken over everything except for the wood and tin huts of the favelas. These are packed so close that nothing grows between. In Asunción a person is hard pressed to find a city beneath the canopy of foliage.

“Only God can make a tree,”* and a Paraguayan believes it. If just anyone could zap out a tree at will, then Paraguayans might deal with them with more frivolity. But a Paraguayan will not, will not, will not chop down a tree for any reason under heaven. All construction is done with concrete, not wood. All furniture, picture frames, wooden vases, etc., are made from imported wood. Let other heathen countries remove the forests.

Even roads give right of way to the tree. If a road is planned, and a tree is nearby, the road is paved around, and a curb is erected to encircle the tree. No matter that the curb takes up three feet of road, half a lane or two lanes, the tree is untouched. While driving I spend as much time dodging trees as I do dodging pedestrians or other vehicles. Other drivers get out of your way. Paraguayan trees do not. They have grown accustomed to their special treatment and are snooty about it. They now refuse to move, I doubt they will break the habit any time soon.

I admire the Paraguayans for their concern and conservation, but even a virtue taken too far is just a dirty nuisance.

2007-07-23T21:12:00.000-05:00

Life of Hardin Vol. IV, No. 12

Hardin’s Guide to Fine Dining

If you have ever wanted to dine at four star restaurants--but balked at paying the 70 and 80 dollar per person price for a dollop of paté and a few sprigs of decorative parsley--then Asunción is the place for you. Here the paté and parsley sprigs cost a fraction of the cost. For those who care not for fine dining but only want tasty fare that can actually satisfy an appetite, then this city will suite you as well.

**** Fabio Rolandi

$$$ - $$$$ With four star Italian elegance in both cuisine and décor, Fabio Rolandi is the stop for pasta lovers who want a taste of high society. Dishes range from wood-fired pizzas to cannelloni and seafood. Each meal is accompanied by a plate of puffy pita bread (it is quite disappointing to see such a large loaf placed before you, only to have it deflate at first bite). Beware the chicken liver pasta. They think it delectable, and will not warn you beforehand what you have ordered.

*** Paulista

$$$$ This Brazilian-style churrasqueria is a must stop for any visitor. For a set fee, you get all the beef and chicken you can stand. A never-ending train of obsequious waiters brings the meat to you skewered on the points of swords. If you ask a waiter for anything, he quickly replies, “Como no, señor?” for which the best translation is, “Why not, mister?” He then gives a slight bow and runs off to slaughter another cow.

** Lido Bar

$$ During the dictatorship of Stroessner, the Lido Bar was the only place in Paraguay where a body was allowed to be out after curfew. The military police hovered outside to arrest people as soon as they stepped foot outside. The food covers a range of traditional Paraguayan fare including empanadas, medialunas, and a number of fresh squeezed fruit juices. They serve two types of soup: fish soup, and sopa Paraguaya, which is no soup at all but is more like cornbread. There’s a story behind that from colonial days, but it makes no sense and doesn’t deserve to be related.

THE REVIEWER RECOMMENDS

* Punto 10

$ My wife refuses to eat here. The plaster crumbles from the walls, the chairs are sticky, and dance music blares from ancient speakers despite the absence of a dance floor. A large blow-up trampoline castle sits off the exterior dining area. The sandwiches, however, are the best in town. You can choose chicken, steak, or pork loin and dress them yourself. You then pay by weight. The owner is a personal friend of mine. She always rounds down any change I owe.

The less adventurous may want to stay in and cook for themselves. My only recommendation is to avoid the frozen pizzas from the grocery. I often have a hankering for a Totino’s frozen pizza, despite their cardboardy taste. They are unavailable in Paraguay. So I tried a type of frozen pizza here one night. It tasted fine as I ate it. Five minutes later a taste possessed my mouth and would not leave. I had it next morning on awakening. I can only identify it as Artificial Funk flavor #3, but it was not listed in the ingredients. I am unwilling to try any other frozen pizzas.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: A few weeks ago (Life of Hardin Vol. IV, No. 10) I mentioned a girl who once held my heart in her hand. I have received more comment on this than any other, mainly from girls who might or might not have once held my heart in their hand. Each one asked, “Is it I?” To which I reply that yes, it is as you say.

2007-07-01T13:14:00.000-05:00

Life of Hardin Vol. IV, No. 11

Cold Blows the Hot Wind

“Those countries are coldest that never taste of bitter chill.” If that isn’t a proverb somewhere, then no sub-tropical country ever produced a sage or wise man. Otherwise he would know that cold is coldest when you don’t expect it and aren’t prepared for it.

Thermometer-wise it never gets cold here. About 45 degrees Fahrenheit is as low as the mercury falls, such as it did last month, and even then only to set the 47-year record low. There are the usual ludicrous stories that float around that there will be a frost, the temperature will drop below zero, and penguins will play on the subsequent ice floes in the Paraguay River. But they are myths.

No, it never really gets cold here, but that drop from 90 to 45 from one day to the next sure makes a body think otherwise. That and the fact that it only stays below 55 for maybe two weeks out of the year. A winter of that duration makes any sort of financial outlay to fend off the chill rather inefficient. Rarely do buildings or houses have heaters, fireplaces, central heat, or even insulation. I remember during my high school winters students would fight over the back rows to be next to the creaky old radiator. Here there is no such luxury. Instead people go to work and school and restaurants and sit inside bundled up like Eskimos.

Even tour buses and their drivers refuse to prepare against Jack Frost’s abridged nipping. I took a (another) trip to Iguassu Falls with (another) group. We departed on a chartered bus at 3 in the a.m. It was 45 degrees outside. It was 45 degrees inside. I got mixed signals from the drivers. One said the heater was broken. The other said he didn’t want to dry out the gasket. I wish he had dried it out until it shriveled away to nothing.

I have heard stories of the Battle of the Bulge, Valley Forge, and other war winters where men huddled together in foxholes covered with snow. That was what I felt like, minus the bullets. I awoke an hour into the trip with my entire body stinging from the cold. I got up and stalked the aisle, looking for anyone who had been cold-natured enough to bring a blanket and was unfortunate enough to be awake. I didn’t care who it was. Man, woman, animal, or mineral. It was a case of survival. Not many people brought cover. It would be in the 80’s, after all, during the day. People huddled together over fires made of books and card decks. I heard moans of, “I can’t feel my legs.” One woman complained that she felt like she was at a high school football game, the home team was losing, and she only wanted to go home.

The drivers stayed locked in their front cabin, dancing. The thrum of salsa music pulsed against the glass partition. I moved around for fifteen minutes before I saw someone squirm. I dove under the cover with them. I won’t tell you who it was. At the time I wasn’t ashamed, and I shall never look back on it again. I survived the night, and that is all you need know. Except take a blanket if ever travel near the Equator. Forty-five is never so cold as when compared to ninety.

2007-07-01T13:13:00.000-05:00

Life of Hardin Vol. IV, No. 10

Shave and a Haircut

The good Lord, in his wisdom, gave Paul a thorn in his side to keep him humble. To me he gave the tangled mass of hair upon my head. It resembles more the dense and weedy undergrowth of an African jungle than it does a head of hair. It has been unruly and uncooperative most of my life. I even thought at one time about shaving my head because I heard a rumor that curly hair would grow back straight if shaved off.

In my younger days I kept it cut so short it could not curl. It was the only trick I had discovered to keep it semi-tame. I worried so much about it that I avoided conversations with girls for fear my hair would suddenly sprout an inch and cause my instant mortification. In order to keep it thus short I required frequent haircuts. I refused, however, to pay six dollars to fight a losing battle. Instead I required my mom to do the cutting. With the passage of time my hair wore me down. It never stopped growing. I tired of the bi-weekly trim, and I gave up the fight. I let my hair go. I resolved myself to the life of a mountain man, lonely and unkempt (minus the mountain).

So I freed my hair to go its own way and to curl as much as it could stand. Later I ran into an old friend, a girl, who years before held my heart in her hand. At our chance meeting that same hand shot out and toyed with my hair. “Your curls are so cute!” she cooed.

I slapped her hand down, stuck my tongue out, and went immediately for a haircut.

Now I own a pair of professional electric hair clippers. My wife uses them to cut my hair every few months or so when children begin to run from me or women instinctively run their fingers through my locks. My wife is a perfectionist. “I don’t want to mess it up,” she says as she agonizes before each trim. She doesn’t believe me when I say, “Just go to cutting. You can’t hurt it. It will grow back.” She sometimes takes half an hour to complete the task. The first time it took forty-five minutes. She double-checked each hair to make sure they were all the same length. It was the most even haircut I ever had. My head looked like a giant yellow cotton ball. I immediately went to the bathroom and unevened myself with a pair of scissors.

I still refuse to waste money on a barber to do a job more suited for a weed eater. I gladly sit on the balcony while my wife frets over each falling curl. It’s a small price for sanity.

2007-03-19T13:16:00.000-05:00

Life of Hardin Vol. IV, No. 9

Where the Streets are Lined with Copper

I found a coin on the sidewalk the other day. It was worth about a dime. I leaped into the air and kicked my heels together. You may think that amount of celebration was unwarranted. At home, in the States, finding a penny or even a nickel is not a rare occurrence. Most people won’t bother to stoop down for anything smaller than a Sacagawea dollar (probably not for that, either). I once spent a day at a theme park with my head down looking for coins. My sister-in-law scoffed and wouldn’t pick a thing up until she found a five dollar bill beneath the balloon squirt. I have often been known to scrounge the pavement at Sonic for that extra eighteen cents change on my slushie and come up far in the black. Wal-Mart paves their parking lots with Lincoln’s likeness. Most people walk over these coins without a glance. You can tell much about the economy of a country by the people’s disdain for engravings of former presidents. So yes, I would be quite foolish to invite my friends over to celebrate the discovery of a lost coin.

Not, however, in Paraguay. Coins are magic. Paper money is wadded and torn and disintegrated in the sweaty palms of a hundred people. Coins, however, contain power in their metal. They brighten days. They bring smiles. They are cherished above all other monies. The boy who raps on your car window at the stoplight may not have eaten for two days. Give him a coin and his pout disappears. He turns cartwheels in front of your car. Pay for your groceries with a hundred and you are frowned at. If you don’t have the coins to equal the change needed, you are spat upon. If you supply exact change, the managers rise up and called you blessed.

My wife once took three dollars worth of coins to pay for a new mop. She poured the coins on the counter. The other cashiers ran over and gazed wide-eyed and opened mouth at the pile of treasure. They gave my wife a laurel crown to wear. I once tried the same thing at a Fred’s. The purple-haired lady glared at me over her spectacles and had me kicked out the door. They tossed the coins into the parking lot.

Paraguayans will part with coins for nothing. If they were made of gold they would not be treated with more reverence. I have counted the church collection many times, in the States and in Paraguay. At home there are always stacks and stacks of quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies. People enjoy tossing them in the plate and hearing them clatter in the silence. Not once have I counted a coin in a Paraguayan collection. Not one time.

I bought a Coke at a gas station here once. The girl handed me two bills and two pieces of candy--those hard, strange fruit flavored candies that everyone buys for Halloween and no one eats. I stared at them in the palm of my hand.

“What’s this?” I asked. “I’m supposed to get change.”

She smiled at me, as a mother might smile at a child’s question. “Why don’t you just take the candy instead?”

I could not get her to part with my coins.

In the States, the streets are lined with copper. Here they are not. So, I found a coin on the sidewalk the other day. It was worth about a dime. I leaped into the air and kicked my heels together. I had never found one before. I expect to find no more. You will excuse me if I celebrate.

2007-03-19T13:14:00.000-05:00

Life of Hardin Vol. IV, No. 8

Rules of the Road

Should you ever travel to Paraguay, you need to know a little about the available means of transportation and the rules by which they abide. The city of Asunción lacks a subway system, but has extensive bus lines that roam just about everywhere. These might not be the first choice, however, if one is not already familiar with the city. They make no regular stops, and the drivers assume you will hop on and hop off during the slow moments.

Taxis are also available to the general public. Unlike other South American countries, these have fare meters so that one does not haggle with the cabbies. But taxis are more like roller coasters than a viable means of transport. They thrill you with a wild ride, but you might also lose your lunch afterwards.

The more adventurous visitor might enjoy driving a rented car. If so, it will be helpful to have a basic understanding of the traffic laws, a selection of which I here provide, translated from the Asunción Driver’s Manual.

Section I. The Basic Rule.

1.1 All male drivers must ignore oncoming traffic and crane their heads to watch any woman pedestrian, regardless of her attractiveness, so long as she is clad in spandex.

1.1.a All women pedestrians must be clad in spandex.

Section IV. Regarding General Traffic Rules

4.1 You may pass at any time.

4.5 If a line of cars is stopped at a red light and you are last, you must pass to the front of the line and stop at an angle in the intersection.

4.6 You may ignore the lines on the road.

4.9 You must sound your horn in an angry manner at any vehicle in front of you at a red light that does not move one (1) second before the light turns green.

4.9.a The third car in line must follow the horn sounding of the second car.

4.9.b The fourth car in line must follow the horn sounding of the third car. Etc.

4.12 You may park anywhere you wish, so long as you turn on your hazard lights.

4.14 Speed limit signs need not be obeyed. They are in place merely as suggestions. However, these precautions are in place to regulate the speed of traffic.

4.14.a Each road shall have no less than one (1) speed bump.

4.14.a.1 Each speed bump shall be painted to match the road surface. No speed bump shall have reflective of colored paint that might make it visible.

4.14.b Each road shall have no less that one (1) large pothole every fifty (50) meters or no less than ten (10) small potholes every fifty (50) meters.

4.14.b.1 All road crews, on completing the resurfacing of a road, will replace potholes where they found them.

4.16 All traffic signals and road signs (i.e. red lights, one way streets, yields, No U-Turns, etc.) must be obeyed at all times with the following exceptions:

1) You are in a hurry, or

2) You think you can get away with it.

4.16.a You may never turn right on red.

Section VII. Regarding Motorcycles.

7.1 Motorcycles, scooters, and other two-wheeled vehicles are exempt from all responsibility to obey traffic laws. They may drive on sidewalks, between cars, etc, but must meet this requirement: No two-wheeled vehicle may have an engine capable of speeds above 50 km/h (31 mph).

Section X. Regarding Pedestrians

10.1 Pedestrians may cross at any point on a street, regardless of crosswalk, provided they do not

1) Look either way, nor

2) Move faster than a stroll.

Section XII. Regarding Buses

12.1 Bus drivers may do what they want, when they want, at any time, including deciding whether and when to stop and pick up or drop off passengers.

My advice is this: stay in a tall hotel with a view. You can see everything you need to from there.

2007-03-19T13:09:00.000-05:00

Life of Hardin Vol. IV, No. 7

A Walk in the Park

6:15 A.M.--Boarded a rented van with chauffer for a 10 hour round trip to Iguassu Falls. Me, my wife, two more women, and a man.

11:33 A.M.--Passed private gift shop just outside Iguassu National Park. Chauffer pointed it out. I wished I was driving.

11:48 A.M.--Purchased tickets and rode the park bus to the scenic trail.

12:05 P.M.--Turned corner on the trail and heard gasps as first time visitors spied the beginning of the falls through the jungle. Suppressed my own awe so as not to look like a tourist. Posed for pictures.

12:13 P.M.--Stopped to let everyone catch up. Posed for pictures.

12:18 P.M.--Stopped to let everyone catch up. Began to sweat under the collar. Posed for pictures.

12:30 P.M.--Stopped again. More pictures. Feet began to tingle.

12:35 P.M.--Walked out on catwalk in the spray of The Devil’s Throat. Largest and last of the falls, tourwise. Iguassu is the largest falls by volume in the world. Catwalk packed. Got soaked by spray. Saw four rainbows in the mist at bottom.

12:40 P.M.--Pictures. Ooh’s and Ahh’s.

12:50 P.M.--Waited while others stood and stared open mouthed at the roaring water. Tingle in feet turned to thousands of tiny knives. Happened to look down at the shallows beneath catwalk and saw hundreds of coins. Shined like gold in the sun. Had one leg over the rail. Stopped by my wife.

12:55 P.M--Took elevator to top. Everyone stopped to view falls from there. Toes numb. More pictures.

1:04 P.M.--Lunch.

1:30 P.M.--Stopped in gift shop. Wife and one of the women looked at stones for jewelry. Area around the falls rich with semi-precious stones.

1:50 P.M.--Got off bus at park entrance. Stopped at gift shop to look for stones. Gift shop has exact same things. Keychains that say “Cataratas do Iguacu.” Shirts that say “Cataratas do Iguacu.” Slabs of amethyst to hang on wall. Phony little trees with semi-precious stones tied on for leaves. Should have bought one and plucked a leaf each time my wife wanted a new ring. Feet numb.

2:21 P.M--Entered Parque de Aves, the bird park that features a “walk through the jungle exhibit” of birds from around the world. Felt like I was in a rainforest. Wanted to take shirt off but didn’t.

2:44 P.M.--Went into giant parrot cage, where you can actually touch any one of about fifty of the huge birds. Attacked by six parrots enraged by the sound of my wife’s digital camera. Ran for my life.

2:57 P.M.--Left exhibit. Went into the gift shop. More of same. Keychains with “Cataratas” on one side and “Parque de Aves” on the other. Carved masks. Amethyst slabs. Wife and other lady looked for jewelry again in the corner jewelry shop. I sat outside with a view through the window. They go in. They come out. I stand up. They go back in again. I sit down. Process repeated ad infinitum. I begin to yearn for the old days before gift shops when you could just break off a stalactite and go home.

3:49 P.M.--On the road again. Driver asks if we want to stop in the large gift shop. I close my eyes and pray.

3:52 P.M.--We pile out at the gift shop. It is twice the size, twice the price, twice the amount of the same stuff. Coasters that say “Cataratas.” Phony stone trees. A five foot slab of amethyst with a tag of $15,000 dollars. I can grow sugar crystals at home.

4:01 P.M.--A worker asks if I need help. I ask where they keep the cyanide. Feet feel like slabs of amethyst.

9:17 P.M.--Arrive back home. Totals: One hour, thirty one minutes sightseeing. One hour, thirty one minutes gift shopping.

9:20 P.M.--Sat down and used my one purchase: a foot roller.

2007-02-26T14:29:00.000-06:00

Life of Hardin Vol. IV, No. 6

The New World

“You lead such an exciting life!” exclaimed my visitor from the States.

I turned to her, one eyebrow raised. “What do you mean?”

“You’re always doing such interesting things.” This came out in a breathless gasp, the same as might be used when speaking of skydiving or tumbling over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

“What things?”

“Like going downtown or going out for coffee or going up on the roof.” She slumped back on the couch, as if the very thought of these took all her energy.

“I see.” I raised my other eyebrow. After a few moments, I did see. When she said “going downtown,” she didn’t just mean heading to 2^nd Avenue in Nashville to eat at The Spaghetti Factory. She meant going downtown in Asunción. There you wage a running battle against determined sidewalk merchants. There you pass between rows of cross-legged Guaraní Indians with all their handmade goods spread out on their rugs. There you hear not a word of English as the people press around you. There you stop in at the Lido Bar for a quick snack. The words on the menu are in Spanish and you never know what you might get. You can take a chance on jugo de pomelo and not be in the least disappointed when the waitress hands you a fresh-squeezed glass of grapefruit juice. It is still exotic.

When she said “going to get coffee,” she didn’t mean driving through McDonald’s for a Styrofoam cup of java. She meant going to Café Havanna, where the coffee is strong and smooth (I am told. To me coffee tastes like boiled tree bark) and comes with exotic names like Café Irlandes, Moka Frio, or Lagrima. Each has its own unique taste, and you can sit outside on the tropical furniture and drink and watch as the world passes by.

When she said “going up to the roof,” she didn’t mean sitting on the peak of a shingled house and getting tar on your pants. She meant up onto the roof of our apartment building. There you sit by the pool and feel the warm night breezes blow. There you are that much closer to the stars and look in vain for the Southern Cross, that elusive constellation only visible from the Southern Hemisphere. There you can gaze out across the night lights of the city, across the Paraguay River and see, somewhere over there, Argentina.

None of those things were exciting to me anymore. I had done them, day in and day out, for a year. They were mundane, ordinary. They were just parts of life.

Having guests is nice. They see things new. The country is exotic again. It’s like watching a child who just discovered a beetle on the floor, or a candle, or a leaf, and being in awe with them. It’s like watching the original Star Wars trilogy for the 99^th time, but with someone, like my sister-in-law, who has never seen it before. Suddenly “I am your father!” is a revelation once again.

Helping someone discover is as good as discovering for ourselves. Tired, old things are made new. They are ready to be explored. They are ready to be enjoyed. They can fill us with wonder again.

I think I’ll go up to the roof and look at the city. But I’m not going to drink any coffee. No matter how many times I try to discover it, it still tastes like boiled tree parts.

2007-02-08T12:06:00.000-06:00

Life of Hardin Vol. IV, No. 5

The Joys of Flight

When last we left our intrepid adventurer, he was just about to set foot on a plane to the land of milk and honey and extra moist chocolate cakes. We pick up the tale after he has been there and returned to a far land . . .

I used to love airports. I liked to gaze out of the big glass windows and watch the planes take off and land. I liked to sit and wait with the travelers and wonder what wonders they might see on their trip. I liked the idea of going somewhere. I liked to watch the people as they waited for their flights, as they said goodbye, as they stared down the long tunnel to the just-arrived plane in hope of catching the first glimpse of a returning prodigal.

I liked to fly in the planes. I like to sit there while the stewardess served me a can of Ginger Ale and a bag of honey roasted peanuts. It was the only time I really ate peanuts at all. They only taste right when they've been at 50,000 feet for a few hours. I could chat with the stewardesses and get extra drinks or extra snack bags or extra rolls with the meal. I watched out the window as the plane took off and saw the night lights of some city I'd never been too, just sort of traveled past. Then I could say, with my nose in the air, "I've never really visited Miami (or London, or Sydney, or New York, or etc.). I've just flown through a few times." I watched the TOP side of the clouds and found out they're just as billowy from that side. I watched the movies and movies and movies they show to keep you pacified--movies that I would not pay to see in a theater and might not rent, but hey, they're free.

Now I can't go now to the gates unless I have a ticket. I can't watch the planes take off. Now I get stopped at security because I have a squeeze bottle of Miracle Whip (with the tangy zip) stashed in my carry on. There it is confiscated under suspicion of being a front for high-tech liquid explosive.

Now when I sit for my snack I am given a bag of mix made with salt, half-pretzels, and Doritos crumbs because peanuts are deadly to some people. I NEVER get to eat peanuts now. Now when I ask for Ginger Ale I am told they have Guarana instead.

Now when I sit back to enjoy a movie, I am told there is only one feature playing on the FROM flight. It is "The Lake House." When I decide to make the best of it I discover that it has two different language tracks. One is Portugese. The other is . . . Portugese. On the flight TO, depending on the plane, I am told the possible features are a number of not-yet-on-video blockbusters I would love to see. On my plane the feature is "The Devil Wears Prada." I don't care how free it is, I refuse to watch "The Devil Wears Prada" or to even find out what prada is.

Now when I decide I have had enough adventure and try to sleep, I do so very well for about five minutes, until my insomiac wife leans into my closed-eyed face and asks in a stage whisper the entire plane MUST hear, "Are you asLEEP?"

Now there are two sides to airports and airplanes. Sometimes you're going somewhere; sometimes you're going away. But if they would only keep a little Canada Dry on hand and one little bag of peanuts, it would be just a little better either way.

2007-02-03T12:02:00.000-06:00

Life of Hardin Vol. IV, No. 4

No Place Like Home

Today I am traveling home to the States for three weeks. It is the first trip back in seven months, so I thought it would be appropriate to fill this space with some thoughts of reflection.

There is a grocery store here that, once every so often, when the moon is full and the tides are up, gets in a shipment of products from the States. Now that may not be a special thing to you, since those boats arrive weekly there to all points within a thousand or so miles of the Mississippi. Here they do not. And while grocery stores here are very nice, their products are just . . . not . . . quite . . . there. You can get beans, but you have to do the initial frying as well as the refrying. You can get milk that obviously came from a cow, but one that's eaten shrub grass rather than Kentucky blue. You can get the ingredients to make a cake, but they always come out a little dehydrated (maybe the heat here) and pale in comparison to a good Betty Crocker extra moist mix. You can get several different flavors of mayonaise, but none have that tangy zip of Miracle Whip. And while there is cheese, no matter what you do, you simply cannot get anything remotely close to a good bowl of Rotel dip.

That said, when this particular grocery gets a shipment in, there is a raid. Armed guards line the doors. Anyone living here who is originally from that land from sea to shining sea fights tooth and nail for whatever lines the shelves.

A shipment came in about a week ago. I couldn't think of anything for which I had been in a constant state of want. (I keep a supply of Velveeta, so I don't go long without cheese dip.) So I went, but I thought, "What's the big deal? I get pretty close to what I'm used to anyway." But when I stepped into the American Foods Isle, I knew I had discovered El Dorado.

Two full rows of items not seen in seven months. Cereals! Real Cocoa Crispis that said "Snap! Crackle! Pop!" on the box instead of "Makes a Noise When You Pour Milk on Them". Mustard and more mustard without extra spices! Pork and Beans! Canned Yams! A-1 sauce! Macaroni and Cheese! Applesauce! Hershey's Brownie Mix! Thick, brown molasses! IBC Root Beer! Orange and Grape Crush! CHARMIN toilet paper! Goober Grape! I don't even like peanut butter very much, and I broke down when I saw it. I turned my head so that people wouldn't see me weep.

So I wandered up and down the aisle, and up and down again, and up and down again. Every time I saw something I shouted its name--"Del Monte Pickle Relish!"--and raked three into the cart. Then I began to notice the things I had grabbed and the price tag. I started to put things back. I didn't need pickle relish. I didn't need A-1. I didn't need Dial soap. I didn't need Bisquick. I didn't need Charmin, despite its squeezably softness. I realized that over half of the things I snatched I never even buy in the States. There had been very few occasions when I had missed some particular item and had dwelt on the thought for more than a tenth of a second. Their absence hadn't contributed two cents to making me miserable.

So there are two things I learned from this, yea, three things I discovered. One is that there is no place like home. Two is that there is that the key to being happy is not to "not want" anything else. It is to realize that not one of the things we have is owed to us. Every thing is a gift, whether it be what we are used to, or just almost there. And three, somebody better have me a moist chocolate cake ready when I get home.

2007-01-19T08:54:00.000-06:00

Life of Hardin Vol. IV, No. 3

Paraguayan Bowl Games

One night months ago my wife heaved a sigh at me. It hit me with enough force to knock me over. So I picked myself up, turned to her, and asked, “Are you bored? What do you want to do?”

“Nothing. I don’t know.”

“Do you want to go out to eat?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Do you want to go get coffee?”

“I won’t sleep.”

“Do you want to go rent a movie?”

“I’m tired of sitting here.”

“How about bowling?”

You’d have thought I slapped her.

“Bowling?!?”

So I let it drop. But I wore her down without firing a shot. Months later she heaved another sigh at me. I dodged. She said, “Let’s go bowling.”

“Yes, let’s,” I replied. So we made calls. We invited friends. We alerted the media.

We showed up at the bowling alley and peered at its rows and rows of unlit lanes as smooth as the glassy surface of a mountain lake. Then we gazed upon the sign. “Closed on Mondays for maintenance.”

“There’s the old bowling alley,” I said.

“Okay,” she said.

So we went. Two friends met us there. The alley was ours, all ten lanes. We soon discovered why.

The place was constructed sometime before the wheel was invented. I know, because several of the bowling balls from that era were still in use. They had about the same roundness as any odd rock you might find in your back yard. This, we discovered, turned out to be an advantage because the bowling balls fit into the grooves of the lane. Had they been round, there is no way of knowing where they might have been thrown. But their texture and contours helped increase their grip. The lanes themselves appeared as smooth as the glassy surface of a mountain stream chock full of deadly rapids.

There was no buzzer to penalize you if you stepped over the line on your throw. One of the boards simply leapt up under your foot and smacked you in the face. You were sure not to make that mistake again. On many occasions points were scored before the first ball was thrown. The pins had long since lost their sense of equilibrium. That sort of thing is expected at their age. They often tumbled over if you looked at them sternly enough. Or if the pin setter was a tad ungentle. Or if someone sighed too heavily. Often that was the only way to knock them down. If you aimed, you would certainly never hit the proper target.

Then there were some that had gone the opposite direction. They became ornery in their old age. One ball soared down the lane, teetered half of its weight over the gutter, recovered and curved toward center pin. This is struck with such force the other pins jumped out of the way before they were demolished. Except for the back pin. This stood its ground as though rooted. The ball banged into it and stopped as though against a brick wall. The pin stood firm in its place. One of the other pins, still rocking from the blow, took heart at his friends example and righted itself like a weeble-wobble. We thought about throwing another ball to clear out the pins, but I intervened.

“Let ‘em go. Any pin with that much strength of character deserves to live.”

So we gave up. We knew when we were beaten.

I once bowled a 198. This night I bowled a 120, but I learned two things. One is that it is possible to proud of a lesser achievement harder earned. Two is that you get what you pay for. We paid three dollars total for the four of us to bowl an hour. That is a dollar-to-pin ratio that cannot be beaten.

2007-01-15T12:08:00.000-06:00

Life of Hardin Special No. 2

Flashback from Vienna

Monday, June 9, 2003

Last night we took a walk around "the ring." It's the road that runs along the outskirts of the old city. The current road is built on the site of the old Roman wall that surrounded Vienna. The Hofburg is there, which was the Austian Emperor's palace. It has five adjoining arches that lead into it. The Emperor would only use the middle one. Guess which one we used. There is also the State Opera house and the Stephansdom, which is st. Stephen's church. It was pretty large, and grandiose, and lots of penance money went in to build it, I'm sure. That's inside the ring rather than on its circumference. We also passed by the Parlament (that's how they spell it), the Maria am Gestaade, (which is some sort of church and looks cool with its spires all squeezed in between two buildings) and several museums, although we haven't gone into any of them yet. After about three miles of this our feet abandoned us and went on back home, leaving us to crawl. We had scuffed knees by the time we got back and found our feet soaking in epsom salts.

We started classes today. Everything seemed to go well. Corey told the story of how he failed the star basketball player at Lambuth for cheating, so I doubt he'll have any trouble with that. His class has 37 students in it. Mine and Perry's have about six each.

Today I covered Ontological arguments for God and blew the minds of my class. I let them know it was all downhill from there.

Several people, including some students and one of the Dean's Assistants, thought Perry was me all day long. I guess he looks more like me than I do.

Other than that it was pretty slow. Today was a holiday in Vienna. Pentecost Monday. They apparently take lots of useless holidays. We start teaching English tomorrow. Well, that's about it for this day in our "fahrt." Oh, I forgot. "Fahrt" means "trip" in German. We have "einfahrts," "ausfahrts," "turisfahrts," and just plain old "fahrts." It sure is a gassy country.

Oh, one more thing. We found out today that due to the water supply of Vienna, which comes from natural springs in the mountains, the water here is some of the purest in the world.

2007-01-04T10:58:00.000-06:00

Life of Hardin Vol. IV, No. 2

Popular Mechanics

The surest thing to get a man out of the dumps is to give him a car to work on. There is something about tinkering with the machinery, getting his hands dirty, figuring out just exactly what the problem is that lets a man know he is a man. The first thing to lift his spirits is the frustration that smacks him in the face when he opens the hood to take the engine apart and discovers that his model car is the only one of its kind that placed the water pump in a position unreachable without first removing the engine. With this sort of thing to deal with, all other thoughts save the desire to fix the car with a sledgehammer and then wring the neck of the designer are eradicated. This is actually an extremely satisfying frame of mind.

The second thing is a euphoric state of accomplishment when the engine runs again after the hoses are replaced, the power steering pump removed, a new radiator has been put in, the carburetor rebuilt, the transmission flushed, the leaky clutch master cylinder repaired, the oil changed, the new and highly specialized tool purchased, the power steering pump bolted back on, and the brand new head gasket is nestled snugly in place, all undertaken simply because it was discovered during a routine spark plug change that every peripheral system was on the blink.

In Paraguay, all these joys of car work have been taken away. No house, and especially no apartment building, has a place for a guy to work on his car or even change his own oil. There is no store where a man can wander the rows and gaze at the gleaming racks of lug wrenches, crescent wrenches, socket sets (metric and standard), torque wrenches, two-ton jacks, precision screwdrivers, pliers, impact wrenches, or that stuff that magically removes the grease from your hands without water. Every little burp or knock calls for a full blown trip to the car dealer.

The simplest thing such as changing a flat tire is a job for professionals. They are the only ones with tools or the place to work on a car. Take my own case.

My brother had a flat tire on his car. It was parked on a cobblestone road with a slight incline, so it couldn’t be jacked up there. We had no air tank to fill the tire enough to drive on it. So I pulled it around the corner as slowly as possible onto his narrow carport that bakes every day in the hot sun.

The car in place, we opened the back to get out the jack. The jack was not in the proper place. The jack was not in the improper place. There was no jack in the car. There was no lug wrench in the car. The Paraguayan government requires that each car has a fire extinguisher and a set of orange hazard triangles, but it does not require that each car carry a jack. At least, when your car has a flat, you can put out your hazard triangles so that no one will slam into you while waiting for a tow truck.

My brother had a jack in another car. He had a lug wrench. We got out the wrench and tried it, only to find it was too small. We couldn’t even remove the spare tire from the back of the car. So we drove in my car to a service station. They had a four dollar lug wrench with an interchangeable tip. So we bought it and drove back.

I lay down on the ground and jumped immediately back up, thereby avoiding third degree burns on my rear quarters. I put a towel down and laid on it, then slid the jack under the car. Then my brother and I took turns cranking the jack. The jack had a knob, like a large screw, that had to be turned so that it could be raised and lowered. It took about one thousand turns to raise the jack to its full extension, but only about five hundred or so to get it back down. One would think this would make the jack taller each time it raised a car, but it didn’t. No matter how many times we raised the car, it never got high enough to lift the tire. The jack was simply too short.

There are no cinder blocks in Paraguay with which to block up a car. There are no jack stands. We walked across the street to borrow some ceramic bricks. First we piled some of them under the jack. Still too short. Then we stacked several of them up to hold the car while we put more bricks under the jack. The moment the car frame touched the stack of bricks, the bricks looked at me and cried, “We will explode in a million tiny pieces in your face if you do this thing!” So I did not do it.

My brother and I got back in the car. We drove back to the service station. They just happened to have a two ton jack, the pump kind, which we immediately purchased. This, we thought, is the answer. This is the miracle drug. I lay down on my towel. I slid the new jack under the car. I raised it up.

It was exactly as tall as the other jack. Obviously these are the jacks sold to idiots who want to do their own car repair. The real jacks are reserved only for professional mechanics. It ensures their job security.

We left the car on the second jack and stacked up more bricks. We put the first jack on the bricks. We raised the car again. Still no good. So we took the second jack and used it to jack up the suspension arm on the flat tire. At last it was tall enough. “Quick!” I said. “We may have taken three-and-a-half hours to change one tire up until now, but from here on out we make record time, before the jack breaks, or the spare goes flat, or the engine spontaneously combusts, or the earth opens and swallows us whole!”

The old tire came off. The spare went on in a flash. And then, as I was in the middle of raising one jack so I could lower the other, with my head and shoulders beneath the side of the car to remove the bricks, a boy walks up from the street. He comes right over to the patio gate, sticks an arm through it, looks right at me and says, “Do you have any money?” He held his hand up, his fingers circled like a coin.

“What?” I said, though I heard him perfectly.

“Money.” He flattened his hand, palm up.

I said, “Are you kidding? I’ve got a car sitting on my chest, and you’re asking me for money? You don’t even have the gumption to pick my pocket when I’m trapped and couldn’t stop you if I wanted, and you want me to hand it over? Run along and terrorize someone with four good tires.”

He needs to work on his timing. Had he only been there an hour earlier, he could have made a quick ten dollars as a jack stand.

2007-01-01T19:24:00.000-06:00

Life of Hardin Vol. IV, No. 1

New Year's Resolved

All my life I have heard people ask, "What are your New Year's resolutions?" I can state, to the best of my knowledge, that I have never replied to that question with a list of items I intended to improve about myself starting Jan. 1 of "X" year. However, this does not mean that I have never tried to improve myself. I have. Sometimes with success, though some would argue. Sometimes without success, as many will attest. It just has always seemed to me that Jan. 1 is a bad time to make resolutions with the goal of self-improvement.

For one thing, the principal resolution seems to be "I resolve to lose 'X' number of pounds." The program to achieve that goal is starvation, crash diets, or eating less and exercise. All of these go out the window for me at midnight. There is always a bowl of Rotel dip that needs eating at a New Year's party, and the first often calls for a second once the hour has passed.

For another thing, I've always seen New Year's resolutions as a cop out. They seem to be an excuse to put off changes, or to indulge beforehand. "I don't mind gaining 20 pounds during the holidays. I'm going to start my new work out regimen on January first!" In October: "My New Year's resolution is going to be to quit smoking, so I have to get rid of all my cartons now." In July: "I need to invite more friends over to my house." "I need to visit with my family more." "I need to learn more about 'X' subject." And I'll get right on that as soon as the New Year rolls around.

The new year is no better a time to start self-improvement that today. In fact, it's worse, because when those resolutions fail, we can wait out the next 10 months before we have to start over again.

Lucy Van Pelt (of "Peanuts" fame) often made New Year's resolutions for other people and handed them out. I will refrain from doing that, and will instead remove the beam from my own eye. (Although Paraguayan men could have this resolution: "I resolve, next Christmas Eve, to not get so drunk I can't see straight, shoot firecrackers until 3 in the morning, and wander the streets shirtless and sweaty until sometime around noon Christmas day." But they'll have to make that resolution. I won't do it for them.) Here, then, is my list of resolutions, gathered over the course of many years, not for New Year's, but for every day. The moment one is broken, it starts again.

I do hereby resolve:

To exercise regularly and eat fruits and green veggies to keep my body in a reasonably healthy physical state.
To eat Rotel and/or chocolate on occasion, when I feel like eating them, without feeling guilty about it.

To monitor myself daily for flaws and correct them.
To look for the good and the potential in the people I know.

To read a wide selection of literature for enjoyment and the expansion of my mind and vocabulary, including but not limited to the Bible, philosophy books, history books, various classics, Tarzan novels, Dashiell Hammett and other detective novels, funny papers and comic books (possibly the best expanders of vocabulary out there), and "The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits."
To not read any more Hemingway, ever.

To be irritated with myself, gripe at myself, talk to myself in the mirror, and kick myself around when I do something stupid; then immediately forget about it and go on.
To forgive mistakes in others, before they ask, as easily as I forgive myself.

To not put up with excuses or whining for more than about 60 seconds.
To help someone to no end as long as they will try.

To bend over backward to grant any reasonable request.
To flatly refuse to grant any demands.

To not fear death, seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come. (That's from "Julius Caesar" by Shakespeare. See resolution #3 above.)
To not fear life, because those that are with us are more than those who are against us (II Kings 6:8-23)

To do my best in everything, to know I've done the best I could, and not care what someone else might think about it.
To be proud of a job well done, whether done by me or someone else.

To be so funny it hurts.
To laugh with people and not at them, including myself.

To realize that twenty years from now they'll all look like molehills.

To keep my cars clean and in the best shape possible (don't laugh), to keep my clothes organized, my music and DVDs arranged and alphabetized, and to wear out all of the above plus other possessions by use rather than neglect or mistreatment.
To share rather than let people go without or let something go to waste and not be upset when someone borrows something and doesn't put it back exactly the way I would have.

To be thankful for the gifts I've been given.
To realize I am owed nothing.

To pay attention and be observant to where I am, what I am doing, why I am doing it, and who I am with.

To clean up after other people's messes as others have cleaned up after me.
To show other people how to clean up their messes and other people's messes.

To take care of my family.
To treat everyone like family.

To do my best in everything and leave plenty of unfinished business when I go.
To be ready to go at any time.

To refuse to see the attraction of "Gilmore Girls", John Mayer (though he can play a guitar. I'll give him that), cornbread dressing, turnip greens, holiday fruitcake and pan dulce (which is sort of the Paraguayan equivalent of fruitcake, but older and fermented), soccer, skeletal supermodels, Nicholas Sparks books, the designated hitter rule, Starbucks, countertop brickabrack that has to be moved before you can dust, Larry the Cable Guy, or bluetooth headsets.

To not make one of these lists next year or any other time, for that matter, since it can all be summed up anyway in two sentences:

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength," and, "Love your neighbor as yourself." (Mark 12:30-31)

2006-12-21T09:15:00.000-06:00

Life of Hardin Vol. III, No. 16

I'm Dreaming of a white Christmas

SPECIAL CHRISTMAS EDITION

I have consulted the records, and Bing Crosby's version of "White Christmas" is the best selling single of all time. It originally hit number 1 in 1942, has been re-released in numerous succeeding years, and made the pop charts in 20 different Christmas seasons. (Whitburn, 153) Each December carolers all over the U.S. and doubtless other countries try their hands and vocal chords at crooning just like Bing.

All that not withstanding, I hold that no one has really, truly dreamed of a white, snowy Christmas unless they have spent a yuletide melting in the tropical heat and humidity of a South American country. Those in the southern U.S. don't really dream of a white Christmas. They hope, with some semi-reasonable sense of expectancy, that they will fall asleep on the 24th watching white flakes drift lazily down through the dark, crisp night. They hope that when they wake up Christmas morn they can rush to open presents with a backdrop of a blanket of white on the ground. They hope, and pray, and in fits of Kris Kringle induced lunacy even believe, that snow will accompany their new ties and bicycles and baseball gloves and dolls and video games and DVDs. And this can be hoped for because there is precedent. It CAN happen. Atlanta got a Christmas snow a few years ago. The Florida panhandle was dusted. Nashville gets several inches on occasion. The Spirit of Christmas turns any little bit into a blizzard. I remember one Christmas with half an inch that melted before I'd opened the first gift. One year the frost was so thick we decided to look at it only out of the corner of our eye and pretend. I still count them both. My grandfather, who has probably seen more 60 degree and balmy Christmases than snowy ones, to this day still puts in an order to Santa for two inches every year. And there is always the chance that it WILL happen this year.

But not in Paraguay. There isn't even a tease of white. There is no hope. It is squashed before it sees the light of day. Bing would be tossed out on his floppy ears before he ever reached the chorus. So the only thing left for me is to dream. I go to sleep every night with the air conditioner on and a Christmas cd playing in an attempt to make myself cold enough and Christmasy enough that I can induce such a Christmas stupor that I can taste the snowflakes as they hit my tongue.

This country has never seen snow. No one who has grown up here and lived their life between its borders has ever thrown a snowball, made a snowman, tasted snowcream, or drank hot chocolate after peeling off layer after layer of snow-soaked clothing. They speak of snow here like most people speak of the Loch Ness monster or Bigfoot. Snow is a pooka, a fairy tale, a bedtime story. It does not exist.

HOWEVER, that does not stop the city of Asuncion from decorating as though it did. There is no Thanksgiving line of demarkation to separate Halloween and Santa, so decorations go up Nov. 1. They are all out and all over. Malls are lined with fake trees, holly garlands, and lights from end to end. Huge trees made entirely of lights stretch to the sky from the tops of businesses. Santas, reindeer, and angels hang from each lamppost to light up the night. And everywhere are white twinkle lights covering the tops of bushes or clinging to the leaves of palm trees like snow or dripping from the eaves of houses like icicles.

The malls even have Santas decked out in fur with billowy cotton blankets around their workshops. The fur, of course, is a little thin, along with the suits. I wouldn't blame them if they wore shorts. To get myself in the Christmas mood I though of visiting one while in the mall one day and there was no line of kids. That was until I noticed he was 23 years old or so, with the phoniest beard you've ever seen, and passed the time calling to the 18 year-old-girls to come sit on his lap. I suppose that Christmases without snow, or at least the hope of it, can have that affect.

So I hope that you have a Merry Christmas, that you get what you asked for if you have been good, that you get coal if you've been bad (you know who you are), and that you are snowed in for the day. And I will keep the windows closed, the air conditioner set on frigid, make Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye tap dance the snow in all day long, and have a white Christmas myself, if only in my dreams.

Seasons Greeting and Happy Holidays to you and yours.

Whitburn, Joel. "Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits, The." New York: Billboard, 1996.

2006-12-07T12:26:00.000-06:00

Life of Hardin Vol. III, No. 15

Paraguay: The Friendly Country

Paraguayans are some of the friendliest people you are ever likely to meet. They will without fail bid you good day on the street, sometimes even if you do not bid them good day first. They will ask you about your health, and truly be interested. They will tell you that you are fat, and mean no evil by it. They simply wish to spur you to exercise. They will tell you that you are thin, and mean no good by it. They simply want you to have sufficient insulation against the cold. The fruit vendor will quote you a price for a watermelon or a sack of lemons, then only charge you the friend rate. He has such a spirit of charity that he will proceed to make friends with the rest of his customers as well. The average man on the street will stop to help direct your car into a tight parking slot, and will not mind a bit if you tap the other car just slightly. He is perfectly happy so long as he could be of service.

Bear in mind, this is not simply for close friends or relatives. They take such an interest in the lives of others that this applies to all. They take being their brother’s keeper seriously, and everyone is their brother so long as they can keep him by heaping advice on his head.

I give this example.

I went to the supermarket the other day. I pulled in and bumped a rebar tower with the front bumper. No damage. But one of the bag boys was outside. He thought it was funny.

“Do it harder,” he said.

“I don’t want to do it harder,” I said as I backed up and straightened the car.

“Okay, I’ll help! Closer! Closer! Why’d you stop? There’s still room left.”

“That’s good enough,” I said.

“You scared now?”

“That’s right, I’m scared.”

“Ha! He’s scared now!”

I got out.

“So what you gonna get?” he asked.

“A Sprite Zero.”

“That all? You need to get a bunch of stuff.”

“I don’t need a bunch of stuff. I just need a Sprite for supper.”

“What you gonna get? A liter and half?”

“Yep.”

“You gonna get the double pack?”

“No, just the one?”

“What!? Why not the double?”

“I don’t need the double! I just need one.”

“Ok, just get one then. That’s okay.”

So I went in. I got my Sprite and came back out. He was picking up trash in the parking lot. I said, “What’s your name?”

“Roberto.”

“Here.” I flipped him a coin. I really did flip it so I could feel like a big shot.

He is now my friend forever. He would stick his arm in fire up to here for me, I have no doubt.

But he did not call me fat. I don’t care how friendly he was, had he done that, he would have received no tip.

2006-11-11T08:30:00.000-06:00

Life of Hardin Special No. 1

The Editors of Life of Hardin would like to apologize for the delay in this week's installment. Our reporter was on assignment. So we offer this Special Life of Hardin FLASHBACK from Saturday, June 7, 2003. (In other words, please don't cancel your subscription.)

VIENNA, AUSTRIA

Corey arrived yesterday (Saturday) morning. He has a beard and looks like an Italian. There are two other teachers living here with us--the Chamberlains from Virginia Beach. They are an older couple who are pretty cool. We threatened to prank their room sometime, and we are secretly hoping she will cook for us. Keep your fingers crossed.

Last night we went to the Volksoper (one of the opera houses here) and saw "Falstaff," Verdi's final opera and based on "The Merry Wives of Windsor." It was a comedy, but wasn't very good. The actors (?) sang very well, but the songs were not memorable and were in Italian with German supertitles (there was a projection screen above the stage). It's like a whole different language or something. It's so weird. Even the kids speak German here. I don't know how they got so smart so fast. Back to the opera. The setting was moved up to 1950's, which didn't fit well; but it made some of the scenes fun to look at because they were in garish technicolor and the women wore matching dresses. think a drama would have worked better, because we couldn't understand the words and didn't get any of the jokes. You know how when you tell a joke and little kids don't get it but laugh anyway? That was us. There were a few physical comedy bits that weren't that great. But we got in for 2 Euros, which is about $2.40, so who can complain?

Last night after the show we were starved. We got off the subway near our dorm and hunted for some food. What met us was a vast desert of schnitzel and shhhhtrudle and kaesesplaetze and wackenbrukers and bratwurst con serf--none of which were we brave enough to order on empty stomach's and 12 Euros. Suddenly a glowing light shone on us from above. Two gleaming arches rose in our path. Apparently the universal language is not Love, but "Two Big Macs and McNuggets, and make it snappy, man!"

Saved for the moment from hunger, we headed back to our dorm, only to find someone had moved the city while we were away. All Vienna streets look and sound exactly alike. We tried to align ourselves by locating a Starbucks, but apparently there's one on every corner here, proving that Starbucks has now cornered the market in corners throughout the world. In the meantime, we have tried to stop many people to ask where Mondsheingasse is. In doing so Perry, Corey, and I discovered that we are mutants whose latent superpowers are only manifested in Vienna--we can become invisible. We wound up down something-or-other-gasse until we found a map in a hotel lobby. While studying it at a corner, a Viennese couple walked up to us, asked if we needed help, and pointed us in the right direction. We concluded that our invisibility only works when looking directly at someone. Eventually we made it back and decided that we had gotten off the subway at the right stop, but had walked back up to street level via a different set of stairs and gotten turned around.

At the dorm, we ate and played cards until 4. We're learning a new card game each day, so we should be well versed upon re-entering the States.

Church this morning was pretty normal. There were fifteen of us, including a baby. The grape juice was ruined. In the middle of service a part-time teacher here delivered his opinion on world travel and soaking up new cultures and ideas and being open-minded. Oh, and he threw in that Jesus did lots of traveling Himself. Perry, Corey and I will be conducting services the next three weekends.

Dan conducted most of services. He is from Romania and is the Jack of All Trades here at the school. He is always . . . but I could spend a whole article about Dan the Man, so I'll save him for a slow day.

After church Linda Boyer took us and the Chaimberlains out to eat. She is very nice and very helpful and very glad that we are here. From listening to her, our classes can have an even more Biblical message than we supposed, although we also have to be sure and keep them academically sound. Corey ordered a form of Bratwurst. He got a plate full of saur kraut and about seven breakfast sausage links. He ate McDonald's afterwards. Perry and I both ate kaesesplatze, which is like macaroni with onions and bacon. I liked it, Perry didn't. It had a different kind of cheese on it that was a little fermenty.

We ate gelato afterwards. For those who have had it: It was good, but not all as advertised. Maybe it was just the kind I got (choco crunch). I liked it, but it certainly wasn't any better than Shakey's or homemade chocolate-chocolate chip. It was only 1 Euro, though, and the man serving it was Italian and very friendly (we think). He still thought Clinton was president and wanted to know about Monica Lewinski. We told him Clinton was out, a Bush was back in, and that Monica was making lots of money telling all. I'm not sure we got it all across the language gap, but we got our gelato, said "bueno" and moved along.

That's about it for the day. Isn't that enough? More bulletins as events warrant.

2006-11-11T08:24:00.000-06:00

Life of Hardin Vol. III, No. 14

Beware of the Bears

Paupering is a perfectly legitimate and upstanding profession in Asuncion . By paupering I mean, of course, standing at street lights all day and asking for change from the cars that pass by. Good King Solomon said that it is good for a man to find satisfaction in his toilsome labor under the sun. Now all this asking for money may take place under the sun, but it is hardly toilsome and bears no resemblance to labor.

That is not to make little of the poor. A man in a down time may ask for his daily bread and expect some help from his fellow man. But here paupering has the respectability and permanence of a career that it was never intended to have. The willingness of citizens to scrape the crumbs of change out their windows makes it lucrative.

There are some who take their business seriously and in the proper state of humility. They understand their position of dependence. They appreciate what is received as a gift. Then there are others who do not. They often wear brand new soccer jerseys and brand new shoes. They frequent car windows when it is convenient, and take coffee breaks when their pockets are full. They ask for wages, not help, and file grievances when the payday arrives late. They frown and curse with malice in their hearts. The tools of their trade are a sorrowful look and a key to remove car paint. With them it is not so much, “Ask and ye shall receive,” as it is, “Trick or Treat.”

It is just this sort of disrespectful attitude with which the prophet Elisha took exception in a group of youths. On them he called down a curse in the name of the Lord, and two bears immediately appeared and mauled forty-two of them. Not killed, just taught them a lesson by chewing them up a little and spewing them out again.

Enoch and I encountered one such career pauper one evening dressed in an official Brazilian soccer jersey. He approached the window of the car and held up his hand in the “OK” sign, which doubles as a beg for a coin. Enoch gave him a few coins, about a dime’s worth. The boy (definitely a professional), pointed across at me and said, “And he owes me a quarter.”

Enoch said, “That’s for both of us.”

“No, he needs to give me something.” He crossed his arms and planted them on the window sill.

Money or silver I had none, so I gave him what I had. “Beware of the bears,” I said.

“What?” said the boy.

“Beware of the bears,” said Enoch.

“There are no bears here.”

“Beware of the bears,” I repeated. Had he read his Bible, he would have realized just how useful was the advice. It was only a warning. I called down no curses on his head in the name of the Lord.

“There are no bears here,” he said again.

“Yes there are.”

“Why didn’t the television tell me?”

“It was in the paper,” I said. “Didn’t you hear?”

“There are no bears here.”

“Beware of the bears,” said Enoch.

“There are no bears here.” The boy backed away from the car, his fingers clutched around the coin he had so desperately earned. “There are no bears here.”

I am sure he treasured that ten cents more than any other he got that night. It may have been the hardest earned of his short career. I hope he learned a lesson. I hope he heeds the warning. I pray that he rethinks his profession and picks up something that will give him a bit more career satisfaction, an appreciation of his toilsome labor under the sun, such as graft or larceny. This bold hypocrisy in broad daylight I cannot abide.

2006-11-02T06:16:00.000-06:00

Life of Hardin Vol. III, No. 13

Service While You Wait

Wal-Mart. That’s where you go when you need . . . grape juice . . . or a light bulb . . . or tennis balls . . . or a last minute Christmas present . . . or a new muffler. But that’s not where you’d go here in Paraguay . Here you would go to the local stop light. That is where you get what you need. That is where you go when your weekly paycheck just came in, or you are stir crazy in the house, or it’s Saturday night and you’ve got nothing better to do but browse.

Wal-Mart has nothing on service when compared to an Asuncion stop light. At Wal-Mart you actually have to get out of your car and go in the store. But at a stop light in Asuncion the goods are brought right to your window. You can get anything you need. You just have to know which stop light to browse.

Fruits and vegetables are at the corner of Santos and Espana. Little men run up to your car window with baskets full of apples, oranges, strawberries, all sprayed down with water and arranged so that they look like the pyramids along the Nile . The vendors are very nice and concerned about your health. They know you need your daily dosage of fruit. They will insist on you buying fruit, will persevere despite your protestations, and rarely take it personal when you knock them over with a car door. At the corners of Espana and Sacremento, Mariscal Lopez and Senador Long, and most of the downtown stop lights are the electronics sections. There you can find CD’s, CD covers, cell phones, cell phone covers, and tomorrow’s DVD’s today. Also available at these fine corners as well as the corner of Espana and San Martin we have automotives. There you can find steering wheel covers, oil filters, windshield wipers, and this thing that looks like a huge rubber gasket but might be a turban, I don’t know. It has not sold for some months now and must have everyone else perplexed as well. That could be its purpose. It is a Perplexer, and it is the best I have seen.

Then there is the clearance aisle. This is at the corner of Aviadores del Chaco and Madame Lynch, although once in a while, when the tide is up, clearance items are found on every corner. One man, on this particular corner, had a spatula; a strainer; alien party favors whose antennae extended when you blew their necks; a mesh laundry bag full imitation Nerf soccer balls, volleyballs, and softballs; a CD album; car freshener that smelled vaguely of the type of incense that triggers a gag reflex; and a hot water bottle (his crown jewel). A small list of other clearance items, found at random places, is included (see Appendix A).

On every Saturday these close down and make way for the newsboys. They are quite a disappointment, however. Never once have I had an, “Extra! Extra!” shouted at me nor heard a really good lie of a headline. This is probably why I have never bought a paper here. One day I will take a young newsie under my wing and teach him to charge double for his last copy.

APPENDIX A

Other Items Found for Sale at Stop Lights

Fingernail clippers
Deflated soccer balls
Dreamcatchers
Kites
A hair cutting kit complete with comb and scissors
Gum
Advertisement fliers (available for only a small donation)
Rags
Assorted candies
Magazines
Map of the city
Laminated multiplication tables up to 12x12
Cigarettes
Some kind of native Indian weaving things
Homemade bread
Homemade candy that appears to be peanut brittle but promises to taste more similar to the underside of an old shoe

2006-10-26T13:45:00.000-05:00

Life of Hardin Vol. III, No. 12

Conspiracy Theory

It is a shame, but countries that are situated in the tropics do not have seasons. You may think this is a nice thing. Winters, if there are any, are extremely mild. Summers can be overwhelming. The worst thing, however, is that this sort of even-keeled temperature breeds a single-mindedness in the realm of sports that is detrimental to variety. Here in Paraguay there is only one sport, and there is only one season that lasts the whole year. If you find it annoying to turn on TBS and see an Atlanta Braves game four nights out of the week, six months out of the year, I implore you never to watch television in a South American country. There it is soccer, on half the channels, all year long.

Soccer is king. All other sports are the stepchildren who are beheaded so they cannot usurp the throne. It is not simply a case of preference. There is an actual, malicious intent against all sports non-soccer. It is possible there is also malicious intent against me personally on the part of the sports channels here. I give this evidence.

Several months ago the NBA playoffs were underway. ESPN here showed games in the conference championship rounds. I thought myself justified in the conclusion that, “Surely, if the conference games are shown, the Finals will also be shown.” So I tuned to ESPN at the appointed hour and saw no game and no pre-game tune-up. I hoped my clock was fast. The ESPN logo flashed by on the screen. “This is it,” I thought. Instead I was treated to a rerun of the last week’s tennis French Open match. A crawler scrolled across the screen informing me that a soccer game was in rain delay. The NBA finals weren’t even acknowledged to be in existence.

Baseball, however, is the most ill-treated of sports. Once in a while ESPN shows a game on Sunday night. This, however, is only a carrot used to lead on the donkey. A commercial advertised a game for the past Sunday night. It was a big game against the Astros and Cards. It might have decided who went to the post-season and who stayed home. I invited people over. “They’re showing baseball! They’re showing a Cards game!” I was heady with excitement. We made chips and salsa. We had hamburgers and chicken. We popped the tops on our glass bottled Cokes. We tuned to ESPN at the appointed hour . . .

And the NFL game between the Broncos and Who Cares? came on instead. THAT was so obviously malicious. That sort of thing does not happen by mistake. I felt evil intent behind it. It was just almost the right thing, but not quite. I had ordered Coca-Cola, and received Sam’s Choice.

Then two nights later I read on the internet that a rookie was throwing a no-hitter. It was in the ninth inning. “Surely,” I thought to myself beyond hope, “surely everything will be pre-empted for the last inning.” I was heady with excitement once again. I tuned to ESPN . . .

To watch the finals of the World Domino Championship. Someone, somewhere, was laughing at me.

ESPN has been showing commercials for the first day of playoffs. They start tomorrow. They say they will show both American League games. It is a lie. I have never been lied to so badly in my life. I can smell deviltry afoot. But I am immune. I have been down-trodden. I have been put-upon. I have been hardened and jaded by ill-treatment. I can’t be fooled. There is no possible way on earth that TWO baseball games will be shown back-to-back.
But maybe they’ll just show one.

2006-10-21T07:58:00.000-05:00

Life of Hardin Vol. III, No. 11

DOWNTOWN ASUNCION , PARAGUAY

A large park sits in the center of town, an oasis of green amidst the forest of concrete buildings. On the corner of this park, which covers about four blocks, is the Plaza de los Heroes, or Heroes Plaza . It is a squarish building with a round cupola on top. Should you ever venture to Paraguay and be interested in learning some of the country's history, this would be a fine first stop. In the very middle of the one large room of the memorial is a circular pit. Down in the pit are entombed the remains of many of Paraguay 's former leaders. It is full of rascals. I will tell a little about a few of the most famous.

Over here we have Jose Gaspar Rodriguez de Francia, considered the country's first dictator after independence had been gained. He was known as El Supremo Dictador. He ruled with an iron fist and wore a long black duster in every drawing I have seen of him. I respect him for that, if nothing else, considering the heat here. I am told he was painfully honest to the point that he never took money from the treasury, returned much to the people at his own expense, and never told a lie. I cannot be much impressed by that last until I know whether his wife ever asked his opinion on wallpaper. He is now known as El Difunto, which means "The Dead One."

Over here we have Carlos Antonio Lopez. He also ruled with an iron fist, but whether it was the same one Francia used, I do not know. During his reign Paraguay prospered, but not as much as Lopez himself. He was reportedly very fat, and was known as El Excelentisimo. He too is now dead, but so far as I know does not share the title of El Difunto, apparently to avoid confusion.

Over here we have Francisco Solano Lopez, the son of the former Lopez. He plunged the country into war with Argentina , Brazil , and Uruguay and successfully killed off two-thirds of his country's male population. I can't really agree with his politics, but I must admire his spunk. He now has a main thoroughfare and a shopping mall named after him.

In between them all is the Unknown Soldier. I wonder if he considered it an honor to be buried there or not. I assume that is why he asked his name to be left off.

Across the street is the famous Lido Bar (see Life of Hardin Vol. III, No. 10). During the dictatorship of Stroessner (1954-1989) it was the only public place in town where curfew was not enforced. Its famous dish is fish soup with sopa paraguaya (similar to cornbread). A group of about ten of us ate there one day. It is always very crowded, so we sat with a Paraguayan gentleman of about 65 who had confiscated a large table for his empire. He was glad to have us after we called him chief and asked him to sit at the head of the table. He wore a black suit, had a few silver hairs slicked back over his bald head, and no teeth at all. The fried pork chop he ordered must have been old, he said, because he couldn't chew it. He was self-taught, I gathered, because he kept repeating, "I tell myself this . . ." and then expounded on many subjects. He told himself that he disliked George Bush but believed him to be intelligent, admired JFK greatly, and got most of his political views from watching old Errol Flynn swashbucklers (or so he told me as fact). He studied the Bible for ten years and then, having found he had mastered it, moved on to newer horizons.

I believe he is campaigning for a spot in the tomb alongside El Difunto. I feel confident he will make it

2006-10-13T12:44:00.000-05:00

Life of Hardin Vol. III, No. 10

Beautiful Downtown Asuncion

I feel that I have been remiss in traveloguing the historical and touristic highlights of the city of Asuncion and have instead drifted toward reporting the minutiae of daily life. The Editors are afraid that this will leave travelers in the dark as to "What to Do" or "What to See" on an excursion to Paraguay . That will here be rectified, starting with a detailed description of the downtown area.

A large park sits in the center of town, an oasis of green amidst the forest of concrete buildings. On the corner of this park, which covers about four blocks, is the Plaza de los Heroes, or Heroes Plaza . It is a --

But wait. Before you are sent out as sheep among the wolves of downtown, I must issue a warning. The streets of downtown Asuncion are not the same as the streets of, say, Reagan , Tennessee , or Florence , Alabama , or fill in the name of your favorite southern town. There you are expected to actually enter a store before being harassed by a salesman. Here, however, the salesmen meet you halfway. They are at you the moment you step out of the taxi. They are at you the moment you finish your meal and leave the restaurant. At times, they are at you WHILE you eat your meal.

Most of the sidewalks are lined with permanently temporary stands that sell fruit, t-shirts, Cokes, hats, tablecloths, Rey-Bin and Oakey sunglasses, wooden carvings, etc. And there are other vendors without stands who simply walk up and down and will sell anything and everything.

Here is a typical interchange:

A person, you, steps out of a car. Three vendors swarm, throwing punches at the other for the right to be first. A boy with a tray full of watches sneaks in while the other three are fighting. He shoves the watches in your face.

"No. Thank you." You shake your head, wave a hand, and keep walking.

Mistake No. 1: You have recognized his existence.

He trails you and periodically waves a new watch at you. You turn, pierce him with your eyes, and say, "Thank you, but no!" then turn and walk more quickly.

Mistake No. 2: You have made eye contact.

He is glued to your side. He jabs a watch under your nose, points at it and says, in broken English, "Au-to-ma-tic. Au-to-ma-tic." (This means nothing. It is akin to when Crisco used to be advertised as "Fully hydrogenated.")

"I don't want a watch," you say as you search for something to rid yourself of the nuisance. "I want . . . binoculars."

Mistake No. 3: You have disclosed your desire. This is the same as signing a contract.

"Si! Si!" he waves frantically at his friend on the next corner. The friend sprints up, out of breath, with a pair of binoculars.

"50 dollars! 40 dollars! 35! 35!"

"No, I want green."

"Wait! Wait!." Away he goes, as fast as he can run, to the other side of Goshen to find green binoculars while you wait so you can politely tell him, "No, thank you," and start all over again. This is the same with anything. Tell someone you wanted a French poodle and he would run away and half an hour later bring back an 80's model cell phone. You shake your head and he runs away again and brings back a backscratcher. This continues until the Judgement.

However, this can also be great fun. Enoch, Perry and I went to Mercado Quatro one day. This is something like an enormous flea market spanning dozens of city blocks. We walked up and down looking for running shorts. We took turns talking to the vendors and looking at their wares. If one of us became trapped by a vendor who, despite repeated rejection, showed pair after pair of black market Hanes underwear, that one would point at one of the other two of us and say, "I don't need any, but that's just what my friend is looking for, in that very color." And we would start all over again.

So it went. Perry went so far as to attract women vendors to us by pointing at me and saying, "Look at my brother? Isn't he pretty?" He said this to one white haired hag who would have enjoyed herself perfectly watching the guillotine during the Reign of Terror.

"Pretty!" she croaked. Then she threw her head back and cackled, "Wha, wha, wha, whaaaa!"

I also wanted a pair of cleats, to go along with my shorts, and somehow this information slipped out to a man with a table full of bras for sale. He disappeared like the White Rabbit down the alleys and showed back up five minutes later with two pieces of rubber with canvas sewn on top, sure to shred my feet to pieces. He wanted six dollars.

That is the thing about the soccer playing countries. They know you are not very good, and know you will look foolish playing against them, but they would also like you to be in pain while doing so. They are a bloodthirsty lot. I believe it is a holdover from when the Mayans would play a sport and then kill the losers. If I were the vengeful type I would organize a baseball game and make every person with a foot that had scored a soccer goal play third base for an inning. It would go a long way to putting the fear of God into their souls and humility in their hearts.

But I have forgotten again about the downtown area. I apologize to anyone planning on a trip to the city in the next few days. I can only say to eat at the Lido Bar. They have good French fries. I'll try again next week.

2006-10-05T08:18:00.000-05:00

Life of Hardin Vol. III, No. 9

State Fair

Everyone loves a fair. When we are children, we speak of it in hushed tones of reverence reserved for things like Santa Claus. The excitement builds in the weeks preceding the fair. "It's almost here!" Plans are made to meet friends. Dreams are dreamt that are vaguely reminiscent of the State Fair of nostalgia, where Uncle Lige always takes home the "Best of Show" for his hogs and Aunt Bee wins dubious pickle contests. Everyone at the fair is related. All are friends. Everyone takes home a cupie doll.

Then we arrive, and realize that such a fair does not exist. The hot dogs are never quite as good as we hope. The cotton candy is twice the price of last year. And bare-chested carnies spray Pam in the glass bowls at the Quarter toss. No one wins. The Zipper is closed because two kids died on it last week two counties over. Everyone goes home broke.

But not in Paraguay. Paraguay has the Expo! Acres and acres of permament exhibition buildings, viewing stables, rides, games, various and sundry goods, etc. etc. The hallowed grounds of the Expo are reserved for use two weeks out of the year and contain the only buildings in the country kept in pristine condition. This year's Expo closed a month ago, and only now have I calmed down enough to write about it.

The first thing to know about the Expo are the promotoras. These are the girls who prance around in front of every exhibit to display the wares. Bikinis were banned for Expo 2006, so the girls wore shrink wrap spandex. It was as if a legion of purple, orange, black, and white clad superheroes descended on the country to show off cell phones, dried goods, grains, fruit juices, yogurt . . . I've never seen so many men interested in the mass production of fertilizer or cultured milk products.

Then there was the lone male promotoro. He stood in front of what in the States would be "Cash in a Flash". He wore a green bandana with slits cut in it for eyes, a green cape, and a gray sweatsuit with dollar signs pinned to it. I don't know what his name was. I think it was Senor Guarani.

This year there was a new brick food court. A patio full of tables sat between two long, low buildings partitioned off every ten feet into restaurant shops. There were too many to choose from, and each with a different and wonderful nationality of food to try. I didn't know what to do. I choked. I ordered a hamburger. It looked good in the picture. I'd been craving a hamburger anyway. I ate one bite. Ethan, my brother, took one and proclaimed it had been cooked in someone's armpit. I threw it out. I went to the Expo twice after that. I ate at McDonald's both times.

Ah! I almost forgot. What about the games? What is a fair without them? And as in all other things fair related, Paraguay's midway tops them all. At the ring toss you can win a cell phone! But it has no faceplate and the brand has been scratched away. You can play the fishing game! Enoch did, and won a bottle of Vick's VapoRub. You can also try to kick over three coffee cans with a soccer ball. You even get two chances. But I never saw one person win. Two cans always fell over light as feathers, but that last can never even toppled. I believe someone filled it with concrete and forgot to empty it.

They even had a Zipper open to ride. Two kids died on it in Uruguay, I heard. The line never shortened. I have no doubt the Expo is superior in every way to the sad little exhibitions we have in the states these days. Next time I'll stay at home and sleep.

2006-09-28T07:56:00.000-05:00

Life of Hardin Vol. III, No. 8

You Can't Get There from Here

"You can't get there from here." You may have heard this saying many times. But I will lay money and give odds that you didn't know it originated in Paraguay.

Paraguay is the poster country for being not able to get there from wherever. Timbuktu and Kalamazoo can be reached from any spot on the globe, but Paraguay must be visted by going somewhere else first. With a stop in Tijuana.

A group came down about a week ago. They first visited the waterfalls at Foz do Iguazu. Foz do Iguazu is an hour and a half away, as the crow flies. But this group flew from there to San Paulo in Brazil. From there they flew to Buenos Aires, and from Buenos Aires to Asuncion. With a stop in Tijuana. All along the way they asked the stewardesses. And the pretty stewardesses smiled their pretty smiles with their white, even teeth and shook their heads and said, "You can't get to Asuncion from here."

Then there are the roads in Asuncion. They have enough trees here to name each road after a different species. They could have Oak Street and Elm Street and Cottonwood Street and just about any sort of thing you please. Instead the streets are named for historic dates. It seems like everywhere you go, you cross the 25th of May. THAT is the one place you can't help but get to in Paraguay. This street is a strange creature. It comes at you when you don't want it. It leaps out at you from around corners at night. But should you ever WANT to find it, it turns tail and runs like a frightened hare. There is also the 14th of May, but it is several blocks over and next to the 15th of August. There are the 22nd of September and the 29th of the September. There is the 19th of July. There is the 11th of December. There is . . . but you get the idea. I have taken to driving with a calendar rather than a map. You have never felt so old until you cross six blocks through downtown and realize you have skipped Thanksgiving, Christmas, Flag Day, Boxing Day, and one or two birthdays all together.

There are other road names other than dates, but you can't get to them from here. There is one above them all. Felix Bogado. HE cannot be gotten to from any point on the compass. I searched for him enough one day I came to believe in him not so much as an actual place but more as a state of mind. My wife and I looked for him as a shortcut.

"Turn here," said she.

I did so. "We're on Christobal Colon. Who is that?"

"Christopher Columbus."

"Is that who we want? Will he take us to Felix Bogado?"

"Yes."

Five blocks later. "No. Turn around here."

I did so. On Cuba street. The little men on the corner turned their heads at us. They sipped yerba as I backed around and back onto Columbus.

"How far?"

"I don't know. We need Felix Bogado."

"We certainly do. Is he here?"

"I think this is the road we want. I can't remember. I went this way when we first got here three years ago." That last, meant to inspire confidence, did not. "Turn right."

I turned right. We drove some blocks until we got to United States street. "Turn right here."

I did so. We drove some more blocks. "This is it. Turn right here."

"This is Felix Bogado?"

"No, but this will get us to it."

I turned right. We drove even more blocks until we came to a large and familiar road.

"This is Columbus," I said.

"Maybe this gets us to Felix Bogado. Turn left."

I did so.

"This isn't it. Turn around."

I did so. On Cuba street. The little men on the corner turned their heads at us. They sipped yerba as I backed around and back onto Columbus.

"How did we do that? We should have run into Felix Bogado."

"We went in a circle," I said.

"We didn't go in a circle, we turned right."

"We made three rights. Three rights is a circle."

"We should have run into Felix Bogado."

"Felix Bogado has fled the country," I said.

We took Columbus again. We turned right again. We left United States strictly alone.

"Where are we going? We need Felix Bogado."

"Felix Bogado," I said, "has abandoned us, and I do not intend to be there for him in his time of need. I am going to find a street named after a date. If I can't know where I am, I want to at least know WHEN I am."

We eventually got where we wanted to go. On the way we crossed Felix Bogado. It is the last time I intend to cross his path.

My advice to you, if you ever visit Paraguay, do not try to find Felix Bogado by way of Columbus. You can't get there from here.

2006-09-21T17:05:00.000-05:00

Life of Hardin Vol. III, No. 7

Penthouse Suite

Everyone wants a top floor, penthouse apartment. Those who live in big cities dream of it. Those who have seen movies about big cities dream that if they ever lived in a big city, they would have a penthouse apartment. But there's always a catch. They're too expensive. What most people don't know is that money is not the main prerequisite to living atop the world. There is another set, a secret set, of prerequisites that will get anyone into the penthouse. I have discovered this by observing the people who live in the penthouse in my building. I offer them now as a service to the world.

Meet my upstairs neighbors. An ill wind blew in our first meeting. I stood out on my balcony with some teenagers visiting from the States. My neighbors hung out over their balcony and yelled down at us. I translate.

"Hey, what are you doing?"

"Nothing. What are you doing?"

"Nothing. We're having friends over for pizza, beer, and dancing. You like to dance?"

I quickly made excuses. Not because I dislike dancing, but because I knew the roof to my apartment would soon collapse and I needed time to flee the scene and establish an alibi. I knew, of course, that this boded no good. Upstairs neighbors who like to dance. Upstairs neighbors who like to drink beer and dance. Upstairs neighbors who drink beer and dance every Saturday. Upstairs neighbors who drink beer and dance every Saturday and have only tile floors and not one inch of carpet in their apartment.

Not only do they dance every Saturday, but they wear high heels. They wear high heels to dance. They wear high heels to work. They come home from work and slip their feet into high heels. They cook in high heels. They go to the bathroom in high heels. They jazzercise in high heels. They sleep in high heels, with one foot on the floor that bounces with each breath. They put high heels on their dog.

For some odd reason, they also love marbles. They keep a jar, or two possibly, by their bed. Every night around twelve they pour them out on the floor from a height of no less than six feet. It's great fun. I can't sleep anymore without hearing something crash and break.

Sometimes they bowl, too, but that's not really a habit, so I don't include it in my list.

So, next time you want an apartment that looks down on all of the little people, dress for success at the interview. Wear heels, dance the salsa, and knock over every breakable thing in sight.

Update: Wednesday Night Culture at Club Centenario.

Last night Centenario had a talent show. That is a veritable plethora of horrors I couldn't stand to miss. However, except for a slight oversaturation of light jazz, no one was really, truly bad. I was ready to leave when a sixty-year-old woman stepped onto the floor to dance the salsa in a skin tight pink, green, and black flower print dress. Enoch turned to me. He said:

"That's the stuff dreams are made of."

She turned out to be the best of the night. Got a standing ovation. There's one thing you can count on. People will dissapoint you any way they can.

2006-09-14T15:45:00.000-05:00

Life of Hardin Vol. III, No. 6

"Don't Try This at Home"

Life of Hardin will not be read this week so that a special public announcement may be brought to you.

Have you ever wanted to try something new? Have you every known you wouldn't like something, but everyone kept telling you and telling you, "Try it. You'll like it"?

Well, don't. I submit my own harrowing escape as a warning to all.

What would a hairdo, scalp massage, manicure, and pedicure cost in the States? Fifty dollars? A hundred dollars? Two hundred? Here all of that runs about 15 to 20. And everyone just raves about it. "You've got to get one. It's SOO relaxing."

My wife got all of the above the other day. Oh, it was SOO relaxing. So I thought, "Maybe I ought to try it."

"So what do they do? What happens to me?" I ask.

First they put you in a chair, I am told. I am glad. I would not want to stand for my own beautification. There are things I would stand for, but not for that. Then they have separate people to grapple your hands, your feet, and your head. And they do not fight fair. They have no sense of propriety. They attack you all at once. One at a time I might could handle, but any man would be overpowered by three at once. Even heroes of old might fall before such an onslaught.

The person assigned to your hair yanks your head back and slops shampoo in your eyes so that you cannot see what the others are doing. Then they douse both your hands and feet in tepid water. Not cold water, to envigorate, nor hot, to soak and cleanse, but tepid, room temperature, spew-from-your-mouth water so that your whole body becomes as bland and clammy as a corpse. Once in a while they tap your knee, which indicates you should raise your foot thus from the water. Am I an elephant to be poked and prodded and trained this way? But if you once raise that leg, they know you have been domesticated and are at their mercy.

Once they have you under control, they begin to turn on the screws. They show their true colors. They begin the interrogation by "pushing back" your cuticles. At this I nearly jumped from my seat! I do not desire to have my cuticles "pushed back," nor do I really desire to know what "pushing back" is. But apparently this has to be done to get the cuticles out of the way so they can come at you with their Loofah. This is some sort of torture instrument--devised in the Far East, I believe--used to scrape your body until it is devoid of skin.

"What do they want to know? What are they going to ask me about?" I demanded.

Why, nothing at all, I am told. They do this simply for the pleasure of it, and don't care one bit whethere you divulge your secrets or not.

This was too much to believe. I came to my feet and stopped the story here. "Is that all? Where is the girl who waves the fig leaf over me?"

There isn't one.

"Where is the girl who stands by peeling the grapes to feed me?"

Not one of those either.

"If I go, can I at least request them?"

Absolutely not.

But it is SOO relaxing. And that is enough relaxation for me. I am so relaxed just with the tale of it I don't think I could stand the real article.

And here is the last indignity they put on you. What do they pay you for the pleasure they get from the poking and prodding? None at all, and they, in fact, charge YOU for the service. So beware. Some people just have no sense of fairness or the correct order of the world.

2006-09-07T16:32:00.001-05:00

Life of Hardin Vol. III, No. 5

A Night at the Opera?

There is a club here in Paraguay called Club Centenario. It is somewhat kin to a yacht club, but it is not on the water; and it is also a cousin to a golf club, but it has no course. However, it is extremely prestigious and apparently exclusive. Someone asked me what I did the night before, and when I said I had visited Club Centenario, they hid their face as though I had just come down from Mount Sinai and could not be looked upon.

Each Wednesday night the club hosts concerts to better advance the arts and culture in Paraguay. I went to the first one a few weeks ago, armed and ready with the name and membership number of a friend so I could get in. I found out immediately just how exclusive a club it is. The guards held me in such little regard that they found it beneath themselves to look at much less talk to me. I passed through the gates unimpeded.

That first concert was Spanish jazz music. I went again this past Wednesday. The guards and I were old friends by then. They let me in to hear selections from Paraguayan opera. I have seen "Falstaff" performed in Europe. I watched "La Boheme" in Vienna and walked out after the first three hours, a.k.a. Act I, of "Tristan and Isolde." I viewed firsthand "The Barber of Seville" in the Vienna Staatsoper, the very hall where the works of Mozart were first performed. But I have never witnessed an operatic spectacle as was performed that Wednesday in Paraguay. It wasn't even a full opera, but only the performance of selected songs.

The small orchestra first tuned up to a note played by the oboe. The oboe never quite got to the note. Everyone else somehow tuned up fine. Maybe they were warned beforehand. But that oboe lagged behind the whole show. Had we given him another week, he might have made it. The strings did an excellent job, however, of keeping time. This was due mainly to the fact that they never once looked up at the conductor. He waved his arms the best he could, but he never once hit a downbeat where it should have been, nor an upbeat in the right place. I believe must have been swatting mosquitoes because they nearly carried me off.

Then the show began. The tenor came out to sing. This was Cesar Antonio Gonzalez. He had taken a Nazarite vow. A blade had never trimmed his beard, and rarely his head. Once Cesar finished throttling the song, we were all ready to lend hands to his rapid assasination.

Then came the soprano for a solo. This Lilian Rodriguez de Zaputovich had married a European for his name. It gave her instant operatic credibility in the eyes of the audience. She sang well, but I am certain she stood too close to the bow of the cellist because her eyes popped out once in a while and she teetered forward as though about to fall off the stage. Her pink dress did nothing to help her stability.

During one song the audience was allowed to clap in time. This lent so much fun to the evening I wondered why those European halls hadn't introduced it before, until the orchestra sped up and we had the poor Zaputovich woman running around the stage to catch us. Of course after this we had to clap during the next song so as not to leave Cesar out of the fun.

The end for me came when Cesar sang opera in Guarani, the native indian language. If you can imagine Tonto donning a tux, riding into town and serenading the local pub with "The Barber of Seville" in Cherokee you will almost have it.

I think I will go back next week, as long as the guards will stop me at the door.

2006-08-31T18:06:00.000-05:00

Life of Hardin Vol. III, No. 4

Sub-Par

I've never been too much of a golfer. Now I know, I played on the team in High School, but to say that you've got to define "on the team" very loosely. I never made a tournament, and everybody who tried out got to keep playing for free at the Winfield Dunn Pickwick State Park Golf Course in the hopes that someone might suddenly become a prodigy. I never did. But I played lots of free golf. Of course, since I never got any better, I spent plenty of time in the woods and forest glades and ponds searching for my errant shots. I lost so many balls that at the beginning of a round I often grabbed a few from the driving range in case I ran out.

Thirteen years later, I have suddenly become a prodigy. I have found the (insert famous golfer's name here) within me. And all I had to do was come to Paraguay to do it.

Enoch took me to the course at his yacht club one day last week. I know, you expect a Paraguayan golf course to look similar to the putting green your dad mowed in your backyard one summer day, complete with an oval hole, an old pvc pipe and a dishtowel stolen from your mother's kitchen for a flag, and patches of skinned ground to putt across. But you would be surprised. This was not like that at all. It was nice. Well, about as nice as you get here. Like so many things Paraguayan, it was just aaalllmmoosst there. It was complete with driving range and caddies you could hire to carry your bags. We refrained from hiring any, Enoch being afraid he might draw the drunk one as usual who believes he knows more about golf that (insert famous golfer's name here). Enoch gave me a couple of Titleist balls and we were off.

Along about the second hole I looked for my ball, which just oh-so-barely missed the fairway, and ran smack into a stallion grazing under the trees. A Paraguayan stallion, with a splotchy coat and a slightly swayed back, but a stallion none the less. He eyed me a second, wondering why I had trod on his meal, and went back to lunch. Along about the fourth hole I stepped up to the tee box and noticed some water off to my right.

"This run very far?" I asked Enoch.

"You're not going to hit it in there," he said.

So I teed off, and he was right. I hit a lovely shot almost 250 yards out and almost in the fairway. As we passed the water I noticed something at the edge. "What is that? It that an . . . alligator?"

It was, in fact, an alligator. No more than 3 feet long, but an alligator none the less with no fence between us. Only a sign that read "!Cuidado! Yacare" which is guarani for "Get to close and get something bit off by a gator." I noticed another and then another, some in the water, some merely wading. Then I saw a guarani boy wading in with them, searching the water for golf balls to re-sell. I left them to their devices and traveled on, glad for once to have avoided a water hazard.

Along about the seventh hole we passed another pair of Paraguayan stallions grazing between the tee boxes. Lady Godiva may have scoffed at riding bareback on one of those animals' rough hides, but they had a wonderful demeanor about them and I thought it very gracious of them to allow us the use of their pasture for a morning. There was something to be desired, however, in the demeanor of the little groundskeeper man who also patrolled that particular hole on a "Grapes of Wrath" era miniature tractor stricken with tuberculosis. It coughed accordingly as he circled behind us. Enoch jabbed the ground with a tee about the time the man revved his engine. We turned and saw him aim full speed at the horses. It was a magnificent sight as they threw their heads up, manes flying in the wind, and ran from him for a full twenty feet before they stopped again to graze. This didn't suit the groundskeeper at all. He revved again and aimed at their rear quarters. They horses seemed annoyed at this second inconvenience, or it is possible they were a bit out of breath, but they obliged by trotting away. Satisfied, the little man putted away up a hill, and the horses stopped in the middle of the fairway, 15 yards in front of our tee box.

Enoch stepped up for his shot.

"You gonna hit now?" I asked.

"I'll make it over them."

He didn't. I've never seen a golf ball fly so low without bouncing. It missed the horse's lowered head by inches. The horse raised his head, looked at us, sighed, and went back to eating. Shaken, I stepped up to tee off, aimed squarely at the same horse's head, and sailed a beautiful shot away off that almost landed in the fairway of the hole we'd just played.

We finished the round without further incident, and I'm proud to say that on this Paraguayan golf course-slash-petting zoo I played the best round of golf of my life. Who knows what my score was, but before we got in the car I proudly returned BOTH of Enoch's Titleist to him, having lost neither one.

2006-08-24T21:08:00.000-05:00

Life of Hardin V. III, No. 3

"Alias Hardin and Hardin"

I have always wanted an alias. Long before the show came out, I wanted to be Also Known As _____ and fill in the blank with any moniker that might strike fear into hearts with only its slightest mention. With an Also Known As to your credit, the common men could spit calumnies at Lucias "Tombstone" Black while your buddies lauded the praises of kind-hearted Hernando Kroger, neither set knowing that both were one in the same person. There are benefits and attractions to being Also Known As which have appealed to me for quite some time. I could be mild-mannered Josh Hardin by day and the mysterious and daring Wizard of Speed and Time by night. I could rob banks in Australia as "The Dingo Kid" and donate money to the Green Party as playboy philanthropist Raoul de Guapo. You see the possibilities.

Usually a person doesn't get an Also Known As unless they skirt the outside line of the law, either on this side or that. Most AKA's are invented out of the necessity of their owner to keep at least one name free of suspicion or wanted posters. However, here in Paraguay, you sometimes get an AKA so you can BE legal.

You can see what all this is leading up to. I now have an alias. I am Also Known As. I can roam the country of Paraguay and pillage under my assumed name and still live a life of freedom under my real name. I can terrorize with one name and curse the same name over morning coffee. The populace and policias will chase a will-o'-the-wisp and never suspect that the culprit lives happily unknown amongst them as an expatriate American. (I've always wanted to be an expatriate, too, but that's another story.)

I became an Also Known As simply by applying for a permanent visa. One of my papers had a different version of my name. It happened to be my police record. The man at the ministerio raised a brow when he read it. "Is this you? This isn't your name."

"But it is my name. That's me."

His eyes narrowed. He wondered if I was already an Also Known As. Had I killed some poor sap with a clean record, stolen it, and taken his name as my own? Did I have a mattress full of conned cash in a foreign land? How many wives did I have? Did I live in Marakesh during the week and thieve priceless painting in France on weekends? Did I sand my fingertips? Did I know how to pilot a helicopter? Had I tunneled under a stone wall one morning and tangoed with the Romanian Ambassador's daughter the same night? What exactly did I want in his country? All of this and more flashed through his mind. He needed proof that I was the same person as myself. So I went to the U.S. Consulate for proof. The man there looked at me. "But this isn't the same name," he said.

"But it's still me. That's my name. I am myself."

"And you've never had your name changed?"

I fought the urge to say, "Not legally."

So I took back a statement on paper with the U.S. Consulate letterhead and officially signed and stamped that said I am the same person as myself. That satisfied the government of Paraguay. They let me in. I am free to live any life I want. A life of crime; a life of superheroism; a life of gambling and theft and of extravagant charity; a life of selflessness and egoism; a life of unbridled terror and boredeom; all so long as I keep one name clean, so long as they never figure out that these two people are really one, that Joshua Edward Hardin is "Also Known As" Josh.

2006-08-17T15:54:00.000-05:00

Life of Hardin Vol. III, No. 2

Open a Vein and Say, “Ah”

I dislike going to the doctor for a variety of reasons, chief among them my suspicion that they are kin to vampires. Whatever my ailment, they stick me and take blood. But in order for me to stay in Paraguay, I had to be given an exam by a Paraguayan doctor. My health report from a doctor in the States wouldn’t do. Neither would my statement that I am healthier than they can stand. So I went to the doctor.

The picture in my mind was of a cinder block examining room where I would be given a tetanus shot with a rusty needle and bled with leeches. However, the hospital I visited was brand new. It was even devoid of that distinct hospital smell of old sickness.

First the doctor grilled me about my health history. I translated by his facial expressions. If he frowned, I replied, “No, never." If he pursed his lips and cocked his head I replied, “I exercise and eat green vegetables." The questions ended and he handed me orders for three lab tests. I read them, in Spanish, and recognized one word: "sangre." Blood. I saw fangs lengthen past his lips.

The receptionist said the lab could do the chest x-ray and EKG that night. The blood work would have to wait until morning. I imagined this was so they could convene the coven.

A short, dark-haired nurse with thick glasses and a scowl took me into the EKG room. She threw a sentence at me in Spanish so fast that I knew she wanted to raise my blood pressure and ruin my test results. I didn't move. She scowled some more, then spoke even faster and motioned for me to take my shirt off.

I pulled it off. The instant I lay on the table, she jumped me with four battery cables. Two pinned my ankles. The other two held my wrists. Then she slammed six little blue balls with cold silver suction cups all over my pectoral region. I wondered if there wasn't a better way to study my heart than to stop it with electric current and then suck it out through my chest.

The machine whirred and spewed its readout. The nurse read a few sheets, scowled, wadded them up, and tossed them on the floor. This went on for five minutes. Read, scowl, toss. I asked, "¿Voy a morir?" which means, "Am I going to die?"

She spat the word, "No," scowled harder, and folded up the last few sheets of readout. Then she scowled me from the room with a wave of her arm.

Before I could check my ankles for burns, a male nurse hustled me to the x-ray room. "Take off your shirt," he said in Spanish. I didn't understand and told him so. He made the hand motion of pulling off his shirt. He took two x-rays of my chest, then came back in the room and said I should have breathed in. He took two new shots and left.

He returned moments later. “Take off your shirt,” he said. He took the same shots a third time, then snuck out the door. Five minutes later another guy came in. He had, "Take your shirt off," on his tongue when he saw I was bare-chested. My shirt smoldered in a small pile on the floor. He placed me against the x-ray table and measured with a tape just where to aim the camera.

The next morning I returned for the blood test. A nurse walked up to me, pulled me in a room, and stuck me, shirt on and all. I was all done in fifteen minutes.

I saw the doctor again the next week. He read my results and said I was so healthy he couldn't stand it, which is what I'd been telling them all along.

2006-08-15T10:05:00.000-05:00

Life of Hardin Vol. III, No. 1

"Fuerza, Paraguay!"

fuerza. A Spanish word meaning strength or force, in context. Shouted at the top of the lungs during soccer matches, especially during the hysteria of the World Cup.

Although books have been written on how to improve it and wives have complained for centuries that their husbands suffer from a complete ignorance of it, communication is not a difficult task. Even in a foreign country, it can be accomplished with the least bit of exertion. You simply have to speak the other person's language . . . even if you don't speak their language.

Take my own example. The 2006 World Cup was in full swing, and I was in the midst of my first day out and about by myself in Asuncion, the capital city of Paraguay. I had a list of errands to run. These included a trip to the grocery and a stop downtown to pick up the official translations of my visa documentation. The latter I attempted first because it was nearly siesta time and I needed my papers before the translator closed. I entered the bottom floor of the office building. The guard barked the command to stop before I had taken two steps. His inky dark eyes scowled at me from below his beetling brow. Did I have business in the building? I saw over his shoulder the tiny black-and-white television set. Rabbit ears poked from its top and sent to the screen a snowy picture of the just begun Paraguay World Cup match. The guard glowered. I pointed to the name of the translator on the big building registry on the wall. The guard grunted and spun back to the game.

Up the elevator I went. The office door stood closed and forbidding. I entered without knocking. Three men sat behind desks, all focused on the tiny color TV against the far wall. Rabbit ears poked from its top and sent a snowy picture to the screen. No one turned to me. I asked, in English, for my paperwork. The oldest man grumbled in a German accent, rifled through a folder, and handed me my papers. I paid him 130,000 Guaranies, and he spun back to the game. I mumbled thanks and headed for the door. No answer. I had one dejected foot in the hallway when genius struck me. I spun back around.

"Fuerza!" I shouted.

The clouds lifted! Light shone down from above! All eyes turned to me and three fists shot up into the air. "Fuerza Paraguay!"

I passed the guard downstairs. His beady eyes glanced to the side at me.

"Fuerza!" I yelled.

He leapt from his chair. "Fuerza Paraguay!" He beamed upon me as though at the return of the prodigal.

I walked down the street back to the car. The sidewalk vendors all watched their wares with one eye. The other stayed glued to the televisions behind the big glass walls of the stores on the street. I caught a glimpse of a Paraguayan player as he fell to the ground, the ball stolen from him.

"Fuerza!" I shouted.

"Fuerza Paraguay!” erupted the chorus.

At the grocery I bought a bag of fresh bread, two bags of skim milk, onions, tomatoes, apples, and eggs. The cashier told me the price. I understood not one word, so I cheated by looking at the price on the register screen. Who really needs to know the language anyway? The bag boy packed my things up and started to lift them. I stopped him.

Feeling confident, I told him: "Yo puedo lo." He stared at me. The sound of money changing stopped. The back of my neck froze under the icy glares of 50 Paraguayans. I heard the milk curdle in my bag.

"Fuerza?" I squeaked and snuck out the door.

I don't know why God bothered at Babel. I didn't want to talk to anybody anyway.