Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Equal pay for equal risk

I am the son of a working mother, the husband of a woman who has been successful in every business endeavor, the father of a brilliant girl who I absolutely believe will make an impact on the world.

So when I hear about women not being paid the same as a man, only earning 77 percent of what a man earns, of this on-going inequality in pay, I say ...

Why not?

This isn't about talent or brains or work ethic. Across the board, I believe those things even out. I have worked with and for brilliant women, just as I have brilliant men.

But it all comes down to an old saying, "the greater the risk, the greater the reward."

And men, day-in and day-out, take the greater risk.

Don't believe me?

Say you're on a cruise ship, like the Titanic. You hit an ice berg, and the ship is going down. What do they say? "Women and children first." Women even before children! In every movie about the Titanic, you don't see the women left standing on the bow of the ship with the band playing "Nearer My God To Thee." It's always the men. It's expected.

But it's not just cruise ships.

What happens in a hostage situation? Say some guy is holding 20 people at gun point in a bank. The police have the place surrounded, and he is demanding a car to take him, unhindered, to the airport, where he will fly to Cuba. If he doesn't get what he wants, he will start killing hostages. And what do the hostage negotiators always say? "Give us something to show we can negotiate in good faith. Let the women and children go...''

Firemen are taught when saving people in a burning buildling to look for "women and children" first. A man can be up on the fifth floor, full-bore panic mode, but if there's a woman in the same room ... guess who comes out first?

So men get paid more than women? They deserve it, just for the fact that society does not value a man's life as highly as it does "women and children." Men are apparently considered replaceable; women are valuable commodities (and I can understand why). If that value doesn't always translate into salary, I'd say its more than compensated in other, very tangible ways. And until that changes .....

I'm kidding. Seriously. It's a joke.

But sometimes my mind just goes this way.

Nick Saban, Mercedes, and car stories from the road

I saw a story out of Birmingham where Alabama head coach Nick Saban has agreed to be a partner in a Birmingham-area Mercedes dealership.

The article repeated the oft-told Saban story of how he wanted to own a car dealership when he first graduated from Kent State, that he was set to go to some kind of General Motors management school to prepare him to be a dealer General Manager, but because his now-wife Terry had one more year of school left, he stuck around as a graduate assistant on then-Kent State coach Don James' football staff and the rest, as the cliche goes, is history.

The relationship between athletic departments and car dealerships is legendary. Almost every college athletic department of note has an agreement with a local dealer - or often several, in the case of big-time D-1 schools - to provide athletic personnel with free cars in exchange for benefits that range from tickets to games, access to staff and players, promotions, etc. As more than one coach has said, it's like every car dealer wants to be a coach; and every coach wants a new car.

I'm reminded of a former Alabama coach who was notorious for being hard on his dealer-provided cars, demanding frequent changes and often at strange times. One of the strangest, however, was a matter of convenience for the coach and inconvenience for the dealership. This coach was driving up I-59/20 from Tuscaloosa on his way to Birmingham when his car broke down; I don't know if the engine actually stopped running or he had a flat tire or simply ran out of gas. But this coach was notoriously impatient (as most coaches are), and he was in a hurry, so he called the dealership and said, "I want a new car." Of course they said OK, and when would he like it? "Right now,'' the coach said. "Get someone to bring it to me." Of course, they said; are you at the athletic complex, or at your home? "Have your guy meet me on I-59 at" whatever exit or milemarker he was at. This wasn't normal, but then very few of the demands of high-powered football coaches are normal, so the dealer sent a guy out in a new car to meet the coach. Of course, when he got there, this coach took the new car, threw the guy the keys to the car that wasn't running, said "Thanks,'' and drove off.

NASCAR drivers have some of the funniest stories on rental cars. Back in the day when the drivers would fly commercial to the next race, they'd rent cars from the airport (this was before so many of them had their own private planes). On this day, a pretty famous driver, a crew member, and a couple media guys were all riding together back to the airport to catch a flight out of town, and they were running very late, to the point that they were close to missing their flight. "No problem,'' said the NASCAR driver. "I've got the collision/damage waiver." He drove to the front of the terminal at the ticketing level, got out and popped the hood of the car, pulled a wire, and then called the rental car company. "Hey, your car broke down and I need someone to pick it up,'' he said. The rental car company said, "Sure. Where is the car located?" He told them, "It's in front of the terminal,'' and he hung up and, needless to say, everyone made their flight.

It was a trip to Puerto Rico to cover the San Juan Shoot-Out basketball tournament where I learned what became a truism I've used over the years. The roads in Puerto Rico where terrible (and might still be, I just haven't been back in a long time), plus the traffic patterns seem more like figure-eight demolition derby than the, by comparison, organized traffic patterns most of us in the U.S. are accustomed to. The rental company told us we needed to get the collision damage waiver, which we did. A bunch of us were riding together, trying to find the practice facility of one of the teams we were covering, which was out in some fringe area. The guy driving missed a turn, and when we realized it he simply did a U-turn across a median, curbs, trash, over pot-holes - and we came up with the saying, "the only true all-terrain vehicle is a rental car with a collision damage waiver."

Words to live - and travel - by.

Saban apparently is a fan of Mercedes. His partner in the deal is an old friend of his from Louisiana, a Mercedes dealer from that state who was looking to expand into Alabama in partnership with Saban. The partner said that Saban has long been a Mercedes enthusiast and years ago expressed an interest in opening a dealership; that Saban told him, "I don't have a minute to run it, but I love the brand."

I can see why. Years ago, when I was at my first newspaper, I received an invitation to go to a SAAB ride-and-drive at Road Atlanta, a road course race track in our newspaper coverage area. SAAB brought in SAAB dealers from all over Georgia to test drive the new SAAB, compare it to other cars, and meet the company president who would be addressing the crowd to spur enthusiasm for the new line of automobiles. I was the only media guy there, and I'm sure they hoped I'd write a glowing report on the wonderful qualities of the SAAB.

Unfortunately, they made the mistake of putting a Mercedes convertable, a 560 Class or maybe 280, in as one of the test cars we could drive around the track. I say unfortunately because everyone wanted to drive the Mercedes, myself included. The line for driving the Mercedes around the Road Atlanta track was longer than any other car. SAAB dealers were jumping line when they could to get in the Mercedes and see what it would do on the track.

Eventually, the Mercedes just disappeared. The SAAB factory reps realized they were losing that battle, and took it out of driving rotation, forcing us to drive the SAAB and Volvo and Cadillac or whatever other brands they'd put up to compare to their new car.

I know I was supposed to write about SAAB, and how good of a car it was (and it was, it really was). But it was the first time I'd ever driven a Mercedes, and it was everything I thought it would be. How do you not fall in love driving a convertible Mercedes, top-down, around the picturesque Road Atlanta course, seeing how smooth it rides, how well it handles, how much just pure pleasure a driving experience could be?

So I wrote instead of starting my love-affair with this foreign-born beauty who, alas, was so far out of my economic class that I feared I would never be able to afford her.

Needless to say, I was never invited back to a SAAB ride-n-drive.

But I did eventually get a Mercedes.



Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Whatever happened to quicksand (and other childhood fears)?

The other day I was watching an old TV show, and one of the characters fell into quicksand, and it got me thinking: of all the things that I was afraid of when I was a kid (and I wasn't a particularly fearful kid, but I did have fears), three things topped the list - the Rapture, snakes, and quicksand.

The Rapture, for those who may not be familiar, is that point in the future when all current Christians are "caught up in the air,'' kind of like the Old Testament Enoch, who "walked with God and was no more," meaning he didn't die but was called directly up to be with God. We were taught that one day Christians would be walking, driving, working, shopping, eating, doing all those normal, everyday things that we all do, and then suddenly, poof! - or more Biblically, in the blink of an eye - they are gone.

When I was a kid both my parents worked, so after school I'd go home and then head out to play with the guys in the neighborhood, with the understanding I had to be home by 5:30, which is when my Mom typically got home from work. (I'm not sure when my Dad got home; in those days, he often went straight to a second job, or maybe he worked late, or something). So if I was not in my backyard playing football or in the driveway playing basketball (which were about the only two things we did back in the day), I was supposed to drop everything and be at home at 5:30 when my Mom got there.

However, there were those days - usually stormy days, when I had to stay inside - that my Mom wouldn't be home by 5:30. And sometimes it would get deathly quiet. And the clock would tick. And maybe there would be no cars on the street in front of our house. And when I looked out the windows I didn't see any signs of movement from my neighbors' houses. And I would have this horrible, sinking feeling that the Rapture had occured and I had been "left behind" (which, years later, would be the title of some very successful Rapture-related novels and movie).

Needless to say, I was terrified.

This was before cell phones, so I couldn't call my Mom to see where she was. It never occurred to me to pick up the phone and call someone, like my zealously-religious aunt who would never have let God hear the end of it if He'd made the inexcusable mistake of leaving her behind. And this was the time of three TV channels (four, if you counted PBS, which no one did), so it wasn't like I could dial in to CNN for an up-to-the minute report. And I had enough sense to know the stuff that was on TV was pre-recorded, so if all the TV engineers and programmers had been Raptured, these shows would continue to play until the non-Christians got in and changed them to shows glorifying violence and lying and being cruel and pornography, which is what I assumed would happen when all the Christians were taken from the world (as described by a rather frightening book I'd read called "In The Twinkling Of An Eye," which was a forerunner to the "Left Behind" series).

And about the time I had lost all hope, my Mom's car would come pulling into the driveway. But while you'd think I'd be running out to throw my arms around her, crying with joy and relief, I didn't. (If you think I should have been on my knees, praying for forgiveness, understand that by that time it was considered too late and while I could still become a Christian, I'd have to live through the seven years of Tribulation, so getting on my knees right then or the next day wouldn't have made a whole lot of difference). No, by the time my Mom hit the back door, I was back in "cool" mode, not letting her see that I was worried, casually doing something else as if I had not a care in the world.

It was only later that, I'm ashamed to admit, my sinful nature would take over and I'd be kind of sorry that the Rapture hadn't taken place, because it meant I would have to go to school the next day, and I would have to keep going to church on Sunday nights, missing the Wonderful World of Disney. Plus, that book "In the Twinkling ..." painted this picture of pure hedonism in the streets of every city, and as a boy I couldn't help but wonder just what previously veiled images I just might see.

Snakes: Snakes should be pretty self-explanatory. Who in their right mind isn't afraid of snakes? I mean, when God gets so mad at you he takes away your arms and legs and makes you crawl on your belly ... that's pretty serious (and why we used to call snakes "Mr. No-shoulders,'' as in 'don't go chasing that golf ball in the weeds because you might run into Mr. No-shoulders").

In high school, our church youth group used to go on these things we called "retreats" where we'd load up in the church bus and go off someplace, like the mountains of Gatlinburg, Tenn, (in the summer, when the rates were cheap; in the winter we'd go to the beach for the same reason). We'd often stay in hotels, with two double beds but four to a room.

And one night, three of the guys and I were in our room, talking (probably about what girls would be like after the Rapture) and I went over to pull back the covers on my side of the bed. As I did, I saw a snake curled up in the sheets, just lying there.

Now, I didn't visibly panic (even though I didn't want to). I didn't throw up (even though I could feel the bile in my throat). I didn't scream (my throat was too constricted to utter a sound).

What I did do was a pure act of cowardice: I simply put the blankets back over the snake, went to the far side of the room, and kept going like nothing had happened. I decided to wait until someone else pulled back the covers and let them deal with the snake. (But I admit I stayed close to the door, and my heart was pounding).

Sure enough, a few minutes later one of the guys went over, pulled back the sheets, and said, "Who put this in there?" and held up a long, rubber snake. We all laughed (although mine was kind of forced). But I still slept in the other bed.

The next day, we were on the bus, and several of the girls in our group asked me how I slept, if anything unusual happened. It turns out they, knowing my fear of snakes, had somehow got in and put this rubber snake in my bed, hoping to scare the you-know-what out of me. They were so disappointed to find out that one of the other guys apparently found the snake first, and that they didn't "get" me.

This is the first time I've ever admitted they did indeed "get" me, so if any of you are reading this: yes, you pulled off a good one!

Quicksand: Maybe you're thinking, quicksand? But when I was a kid, quicksand was everywhere. On TV, anyway.

I was watching a Rifleman re-run the other day (which is redundant, because they haven't made a new Rifleman episode since 1963 so of course it was a re-run), and some girl that Mark was kind of sweet on somehow fell in some quicksand, and then Mark fell in trying to help her, and just before they went under Lucas came and pulled them out. This wasn't unusual for TV back in my childhood. Tarzan movies (I was a huge Johnny Weissmueller fan) always seemed to have some episode involving quicksand. Cartoons like Road Runner would have characters falling into quicksand (and anvils falling from the sky, but that's another story). Cowboy shows like The Rifleman (which remains one of my favorite shows of all time, and thanks to AMC and DVR I can record and re-watch all 168 episodes) and Bonanza and Gunsmoke and The Big Valley almost always had an episode involving someone falling into quicksand. Even "The Princess Bride" has that scene in the Thieves Forest where Buttercup and Wesley are trapped in quicksand. And of course, there is the scene in Blazing Saddles where the railroad track ends in a bog of quicksand.

When I was a kid, I thought quicksand was everywhere, a very real threat that you had to watch out for. I remember reading tips on how to survive if you found yourself caught in quicksand (apparently, you lay back on your back and float and by increasing mass, you reduce the suction).

I am now grown up (I hesitate to call myself an adult). I have travelled a good deal of this country, both cities and suburbs and countryside and mountains and forests. I have been to Europe, and several Carribean islands (including Haiti, which seems like a natural place to find quicksand). My parents lived and worked in Africa for awhile. Never - and I repeat never - have I come across any quicksand, or know of anyone who has come across quicksand.

These days, you never ever even get a good quicksand scene in a movie or TV show. What the heck happened? Like polio and typhoid, did we manage to do away with the scourge of quicksand? Was this one of the great accomplishments of the 20th Century that we so take for granted that no one ever talks about it?

I no longer fear the Rapture. I've come to terms with snakes.

Quicksand? That's the one I feel most cheated by. And if I mysteriously disappear one day, with no trace, maybe I'll have finally found quicksand.

Unless it was the Rapture.