Category: Ed’s World

The Headless Horseman returns

How I wrote a horror novel called Revolutionary Ghosts

Or…

Can an ordinary teenager defeat the Headless Horseman, and a host of other vengeful spirits from America’s revolutionary past?

The big idea

I love history, and I love supernatural horror tales.  “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” was therefore always one of my favorite short stories. This classic tale by Washington Irving describes how a Hessian artillery officer terrorized the young American republic several decades after his death.

The Hessian was decapitated by a Continental Army cannonball at the Battle of White Plains, New York, on October 28, 1776. According to some historical accounts, a Hessian artillery officer really did meet such an end at the Battle of White Plains. I’ve read several books about warfare in the 1700s and through the Age of Napoleon. Armies in those days obviously did not have access to machine guns, flamethrowers, and the like. But those 18th-century cannons could inflict some horrific forms of death, decapitation among them.

I was first exposed to the “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” via the 1949 Disney film of the same name. The Disney adaptation was already close to 30 years old, but still popular, when I saw it as a kid sometime during the 1970s.

Headless Horsemen from around the world

While doing a bit of research for Revolutionary Ghosts, I discovered that the Headless Horseman is a folklore motif that reappears in various cultures throughout the world.

In Irish folklore, the dullahan or dulachán (“dark man”) is a headless, demonic fairy that rides a horse through the countryside at night. The dullahan carries his head under his arm. When the dullahan stops riding, someone dies.

Scottish folklore includes a tale about a headless horseman named Ewen. Ewen was  beheaded when he lost a clan battle at Glen Cainnir on the Isle of Mull. His death prevented him from becoming a chieftain. He roams the hills at night, seeking to reclaim his right to rule.

Finally, in English folklore, there is the 14th century epic poem, “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”. After Gawain kills the green knight in living form (by beheading him) the knight lifts his head, rides off, and challenges Gawain to a rematch the following year.

But Revolutionary Ghosts is focused on the Headless Horseman of American lore: the headless horseman who chased Ichabod Crane through the New York countryside in the mid-1790s. 

The Headless Horseman isn’t the only historical spirit to stir up trouble in the novel. John André, the executed British spy, makes an appearance, too. (John André was a real historical figure.)

I also created the character of Marie Trumbull, a Loyalist whom the Continental Army sentenced to death for betraying her country’s secrets to the British. But Marie managed to slit her own throat while still in her cell, thereby cheating the hangman. Marie Trumbull was a dark-haired beauty in life. In death, she appears as a desiccated, reanimated corpse. She carries the blade that she used to take her own life, all those years ago.

Oh, and Revolutionary Ghosts also has an army of spectral Hessian soldiers. I had a lot of fun with them!

The Spirit of ’76

Most of the novel is set in the summer of 1976. An Ohio teenager, Steve Wagner, begins to sense that something strange is going on near his home. There are slime-covered hoofprints in the grass. There are unusual sounds on the road at night. People are disappearing.

Steve gradually comes to an awareness of what is going on….But can he convince anyone else, and stop the Headless Horseman, before it’s too late?

I decided to set the novel in 1976 for a number of reasons. First of all, this was the year of the American Bicentennial. The “Spirit of ’76 was everywhere in 1976. That created an obvious tie-in with the American Revolution.

Nineteen seventy-six was also a year in which Vietnam, Watergate, and the turmoil of the 1960s were all recent memories. The mid-1970s were a time of national anxiety and pessimism (kind of like now). The economy was not good. This was the era of energy crises and stagflation.

Reading the reader reviews of Revolutionary Ghosts, I am flattered to get appreciative remarks from people who were themselves about the same age as the main character in 1976:

“…I am 62 years old now and 1976 being the year I graduated high school, I remember it pretty well. Everything the main character mentions (except the ghostly stuff), I lived through and remember. So that was an added bonus for me.”

“I’m 2 years younger than the main character so I could really relate to almost every thing about him.”

I’m actually a bit younger than the main character. In 1976 I was eight years old. But as regular readers of this blog will know, I’m nostalgic by nature. I haven’t forgotten the 1970s or the 1980s, because I still spend a lot of time in those decades.

If you like the 1970s, you’ll find plenty of nostalgic nuggets in Revolutionary Ghosts, like Bicentennial Quarters, and the McDonald’s Arctic Orange Shakes of 1976.

***

Also, there’s something spooky about the past, just because it is the past. As L.P. Hartley said, “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”

For me, 1976 is a year I can clearly remember. And yet—it is shrouded in a certain haziness. There wasn’t nearly as much technology. Many aspects of daily life were more “primitive” then.

It isn’t at all difficult to believe that during that long-ago summer, the Headless Horseman might have come back from the dead to terrorize the American heartland…

View REVOLUTIONARY GHOSTS on Amazon

The public soundtrack, and the cheapening of music

I took guitar lessons for a while in the early 1980s. But only for about a year.

I did not have a knack for music. I lack the sense of timing that is inherent in all great musicians. Writing comes naturally to me. Practicing the guitar was always a chore. I wanted the result, but I did not enjoy the process.

Forty years later, I can still manage most of the basic chords. But where music is concerned, I am content to remain in the audience.

Nevertheless, music is an art form that I appreciate. But I appreciate it selectively. There is music I love (most of it 1980s rock) and music that I will simply never enjoy. I acknowledge Taylor Swift’s commercial success. Her music is not my cup of tea.

But I’m a 50-something male, and we all hate Taylor Swift. Right? Well, maybe, but that’s an oversimplification. Even in the 1980s, there was popular music I never developed an appreciation for: A Flock of Seagulls, Prince, Bruce Springsteen, most of Michael Jackson’s catalog.

On the other hand, I loved Rush, Foreigner, Triumph, Def Leppard, Bryan Adams, Journey.

I think that’s normal, where music is concerned. We all have preferences. No one, I’ve found, is neutral about music. No one likes all of it.

Which makes the public soundtrack all the more annoying. Whenever one enters a restaurant, retail establishment, or waiting room, one is immediately assaulted with random music, piped in from overhead speakers. They play music at my gym, even though most members wear headphones.

Another problem with music in public places is that it is usually played too loud. I won’t get technical here, and speak of decibels. If when addressing my lunch or dinner companion, I have to raise my voice to be heard over the music, then the music is too loud.

Almost as annoying is the street guitarist, tambourine player, or vocalist. I admire the chutzpah of those who publicize their art this way. But I quicken my pace whenever I pass by a street musician. Similarly, I would not stand on the sidewalk and read from one of my novels, stories, or essays.

I want to consume my music selectively: the music I choose, at a time and a place of my choosing. I don’t want a restaurant, fitness club, or a grocery store to tell me that listening to the music of their choice, at the volume of their choice, is the price of admission to their place of business. This is especially true when I find their preferences actively annoying.

As a long-ago failed musician, I understand how difficult it is to become a real, skilled practitioner of that craft. How many hours of practice is required to perform music at even a journeyman level.

All the more reason not to cheapen music, by turning it into aural wallpaper.

 

-ET

Kuwa6226: a new horror-mystery serial

A little about Kuwa6226, my new YouTube serial.

I’ve always been interested in urban legends.

I grew up in pre-Internet times, when it wasn’t possible to verify things online. In that era—let’s say, the late 1970s and early 1980s—you grew up with a lot of half-true and completely fabricated campfire stories. Some of them were rather disturbing, especially when they came from seemingly trustworthy sources.

For example, when I was eleven years I was in the Boy Scouts. In March of 1980, our troop was getting ready to go on an overnight hike and camping trip at East Fork State Park, a reservoir and public woods in southern Ohio, not far from Cincinnati.

Just before our departure, our scoutmaster warned us not to wander off the path, and get separated from the group. A reasonable enough suggestion, of course.

Then he told us the story of another boy, from another scout troop, who had wandered off the path at East Fork State Park two years ago, shortly after the park opened. The boy, according to our scoutmaster, had been driven mad by what he had seen and experienced in the woods. He had gone feral, and was believed to be lurking in the woods. He no longer looked entirely human. His hair, now long, had gone white, and he wore the tattered remnants of Boy Scout uniform.

Our scoutmaster added that if we heard the sound of anyone scratching at the opening of one of our tents late at night, we should remain still and make no response. It would probably be the feral, lost boy, looking for food. But he would go away eventually, if we simply remained silent.

This story was delivered to us deadpan. Was it true? Forty-five years later, I am certain that it was pure hokum. I suspected as much in 1980. But at the age of 11, I wasn’t entirely sure. And it wasn’t like I could Google it back then.

Kuwa6226, the story presented in the videos that follow, is a tale about an Internet-based urban legend: an entity that supposedly tracks down and kills those who make online inquiries about it. Is Kuwa6226 a supernatural entity? Or is it a human conspiracy of some kind? That is the mystery.

The story takes place on two continents: Asia and North America, with two groups of urban legend hunters: one American, and one Japanese.

In the first installment, we meet Hajime Takagawa, a 34-year-old Japanese office worker who is searching for a different urban legend: the gashadokuro, a mythical creature from Japanese folklore.

-ET

Rediscovering F. Scott Fitzgerald

In the fall of 1984, I was a junior in high school. I had a passion for the novels and short stories of Stephen King.

My high school English teacher, not so much. He was a devotee of two twentieth-century writers: Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. So I read a lot of Hemingway and a lot of Fitzgerald that year.

I was 16 years old, and really two young for either writer. Hemingway and Fitzgerald wrote about adult concerns, and concerns of what was already a long-ago, bygone era. As a teenager of the Reagan-era American suburbs, I had little interest in the social conventions of the Jazz Age, or the moody ramblings of World War I veterans.

As an adult, I’ve developed a new appreciation for both writers.

I’ve recently begun digging into The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald: A New Collection. This collection, edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli, contains all the Fitzgerald short stories I remember as a junior in high school: “Winter Dreams”,  “A Diamond As Big As the Ritz”, “Babylon Revisited,” etc.—as well as many that my high school English teacher never assigned.

View on Amazon

Fitzgerald wrote his short stories long. Not all of them can be read in a single sitting. Many of his short stories resemble compressed novels more than typical short stories, as they deal with events stretching out over many years, even decades.

Fitzgerald’s writing style is accessible to modern readers, but his subject matter is a hundred years removed from our time. It takes some effort to put oneself in the mindset of an adult living in 1925. (I am soon to turn 57 years old, and that is the era of my great-grandparents. The one great-grandparent I knew was born in 1895, one year before Fitzgerald.)

Still, there are some universal themes in Fitzgerald’s fiction. One of my favorite stories is the aforementioned “Winter Dreams”. This is the tale of a man who, between adolescence and early middle age, mistakenly projects all of his ideals onto a woman with whom he has a fleeting romantic relationship.

1922 magazine illustration for “Winter Dreams”

“Winter Dreams” is basically a story about the pedastalization of femininity. The theme is as relevant in 2025 as it was in 1922, when Fitzgerald wrote the story.

(Note: When I first read “Winter Dreams” in 1984, I “got” what Fitzgerald was trying to say. Some years would pass before I learned the real-life lesson.)

You might be hesitant to dive into a book of century-old stories. I would encourage you, though, to give Fitzgerald a try. Many of his tales, like The Great Gatsby and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”, have been adapted for film in the modern era.

There is a reason why Fitzgerald endures, when so many other writers have fallen by the wayside. Fitzgerald was a skilled and insightful storyteller.

-ET

Gen X memories: How and Why Wonder Books

So much was superior about the Gen X childhood. We had decent schools, conscientious teachers, no social media madness, no “AI” nonsense, and no smartphone obsessions.

We also had a thriving children’s book industry. And no—I’m not referring to Harry Potter. (Most Gen Xers were in our 30s when Harry Potter appeared.)

We had comics and storybooks, of course. But there were also plenty of children’s books that respected the intelligence of children. Many of these books were quite sophisticated by today’s standards, what might accurately be called “middlebrow”.

Among these was the How and Why Wonder Books series. Most of these were published in the early 1960s.

I owned this volume: The How and Why Wonder Book of The Moon.

Out of print! So no Amazon link!

This title, targeted at the casual juvenile reading market, went into considerable detail about the science of the moon and the history of lunar observation. Since this was published before the 1969 lunar landing, that event was not covered, but plenty else was.

In the 1960s and 1970s, it was still assumed that intelligent people would spend more time reading than staring at electronic screens. How and Why Wonder Books, though written for children in the 1960s, would be beyond the reading comprehension levels of many adults born after 1990. Make of that what you will.

-ET

Melania Trump’s AI audiobook, and First Ladies I remember 

Melania Trump has announced that the upcoming audiobook version of her memoir will be narrated with an AI clone of her voice.

Posting on X, the First Lady spun this as a nod to modernity. “Let the future of publishing begin,” Mrs. Trump declared.

As is typical of social media in these divided times, many of the comment replies were vindictive, and largely fell along partisan lines.

This got me thinking about First Ladies, and my memories of them.

I was born during the final full year of the Lyndon Baines Johnson administration (1968). I was alive during all the years that Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford were in office, but I remember almost nothing about either president, or their wives.

Jimmy Carter is the first POTUS I remember from Election Day forward. I was in the third grade in November 1976, when Carter was elected.

Rosalynn Carter made less of an impression on me, though, than her daughter. Amy Carter was, and is, one year older than me.

Amy Carter was often promoted as a typical American kid, just like one of us. My teachers made her a topic of classroom discussions.

In those days, Amy Carter made occasional appearances with her father. Decades later, I met an adult about my age who met—or claimed to have met—the presidential daughter during a visit the Carters made to her Kentucky school.

The Reagan administration (1981-1989) spanned my formative years, ages 12 through 20. First Lady Nancy Reagan was very interested in American teens, and adamant that we should not use recreational drugs. This was the era of Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) and “Just say no” (to drugs).

What can I say about Barbara Bush, the First Lady of George H.W. Bush? The elder Bushes were members of the World War II generation, the generation of my grandparents. First Lady Barbara Bush reminded me of my grandmother. I had a favorable, but unremarkable impression of her.

First Lady Hillary Clinton famously billed herself as her husband’s co-president. “Two for the price of one!” was a phrase that the Clinton Administration actually used on occasion. In the still-conservative early and mid-1990s, Mrs. Clinton’s chief initiative, a national healthcare plan, gained little popular traction.

Always the bridesmaid, and never the bride (politically), Mrs. Clinton would herself run for the White House—twice. The first time (2008) she lost out to Barack Obama in the Democratic Party primaries. The second time (2016), as the Democratic nominee, she lost to Donald Trump in the Electoral College (though she took a greater percentage of the popular vote).

Laura Bush, the wife of President George W. Bush (2001 – 2009) did not shun the inevitable glare of the spotlight. Nor did she project any pretensions of being her husband’s co-president.

Laura Bush has sometimes been described as our most popular modern First Lady. It is difficult to argue with her numbers. A January 2006 USAToday/Gallup poll gave Laura Bush an approval rating of 82 percent. This came at a time when her husband’s approval was sagging, due to the quagmire of the war in Iraq, and looming economic turmoil.

Since 2008, the Democratic Party has given us two more First Ladies: Michelle Obama and Jill Biden. During their time in the White House, there seemed to be attempts on the left to transform both of these women into feminist icons. In the meantime, they became minor villainesses for the right. 

And then there is First Lady Melania Trump. There is much about Mrs. Trump, her marriage, and her origins which are unusual.

First, Melania Trump is only our second foreign-born First Lady. The first foreign-born First Lady, Louisa Adams, was born in England in 1775, raised in France, and was the wife of our sixth president, John Quincy Adams.

Melania Trump, on the other hand, was born Melania Knavs in Yugoslavia in 1970. She had a modeling career in the 1980s and 1990s before she met Donald Trump in 1998. Melania Knauss, as she was then known, would become Donald Trump’s third wife.

There is a significant age gap between Melania and Donald Trump. Allow me to put it in personal terms. Melania is two years younger than me. (I was born in 1968.) Donald Trump was born the same year as both of my parents (1946).

Melania and Donald Trump do not seem to be close as a couple. Some would blame the age gap, but there are plenty of age-gap couples who are quite close. The problem, rather, is that there is something about their relationship which seems distant and transactional. A European fashion model wedding a twice-divorced American billionaire who was old enough to be her father. What could possibly go wrong with a union like that?

Which brings us to Melania Trump’s memoir. Would I like to read it? Sure. I suspect that the political chapters will be rather thin gruel, but I would definitely like to know more about her origin story.

I remember watching news stories about communist Yugoslavia during the 1980s. Neither I—nor anyone else—would have ever guessed that we’d someday have a First Lady from there. Politics aside, Melania Trump’s journey, from there to here, must be a remarkable one. I do plan to read her memoir.

(Or…maybe I’ll wait for the AI audiobook. As I’ve said before, my TBR list is very long, indeed.)

-ET

**View Melania Trump’s memoir on Amazon**

View it on Amazon

The end of the US penny: nostalgia, but no real sense of loss

Coin collecting was one of my childhood hobbies.

I collected historical coins of all denominations: Morgan and Eisenhower silver dollars, Buffalo nickels, and Mercury dimes.

And yes, pennies, too.

I’m not an active collector anymore, but coins still interest me. This is why I note the passing of the US penny with mixed feelings. The US Mint has confirmed that it will begin phasing out the penny after 2026. Existing pennies will remain legal tender for the foreseeable future. But the heyday of the one-cent coin is clearly behind us.

Perhaps I saw this coming, even when I was collecting coins as a kid in the late 1970s and early 1980s. That was, after all, an era of high inflation. As a kid, I always picked up a stray penny found on a sidewalk, but there was no sense of having hit the jackpot. As a kid of that era, found wealth began with the quarter.

Moreover, this isn’t the first time that US currency has been phased out or changed in my lifetime. Almost all currency has undergone design changes since I was born. Throughout my life, I’ve seen the two-dollar bill and the one-dollar coin revived, discontinued, and revived again. At present, the Kennedy half-dollar seems poised to make a genuine comeback.

But the penny? Maybe we can live without it. As a collector I hoarded wheat pennies and Indian head pennies. Few of them were worth any real money, according to the 1980 Whitman coin value guide that served as my bible.

Some casual research has shown me that historical pennies have even less relative value than they did 45 years ago. The childhood coin collector in me, that kid from 1980, will miss the penny. But the penny’s fate was sealed even then.

-ET

Memorial Day: the war dead I remember

I have a confession about Memorial Day.

For much of my life, its primary significance was that it was the gateway to summer vacation. During my school days (1974 through 1986) Memorial Day weekend was always the final weekend of the academic year. Therefore, Memorial Day was a time for celebrating, not reflecting.

I was of course aware of the dead at Pearl Harbor and Iwo Jima. But those were historical figures, frozen in amber. Not people whom I actually knew. My grandfather was a World War II vet. My father and uncle served during the Vietnam era. But they all made it back okay.

Now let me tell you about Keith.

Keith ran high school track with me during the mid-1980s. We weren’t best friends, but I definitely knew him and liked him. (He was one year ahead of me in school.)

Keith was a great sprinter. He received a partial track scholarship to the University of Cincinnati. But things happened, and he ended up leaving college to join the US Navy. He served seven years.

After being honorably discharged from the US Navy, Keith joined a US Army Reserve unit in Wisconsin, where he had settled.

Keith was deployed to Iraq shortly after the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He died near Mosul, Iraq, in the summer of 2004, the result of an IED explosion.

Keith was 37 years old by then. He was survived by his wife and two children.

Since 2004, I tend to think about Keith on Memorial Day. Because he is someone I actually knew. I remember watching him run at track meets. I remember him making wisecracks. Back then (circa 1985), he was just another ironic Gen Xer.

A final note: Keith’s real name was not Keith. I intentionally gave him a pseudonym, because I wanted Internet searches on his name to go to his online memorials, not to my website.

But if you want to read more about him, who he really was, you can read his story here. 

-ET

1980: a shave with your Egg McMuffin?

This is a promotional ad that McDonald’s ran in 1980. Breakfast customers were given a free Bic razor with the purchase of any breakfast entree.

1980 McDonald’s print ad

I don’t specifically remember this promotion, and my guess is that it didn’t last long. This is also one that you’re unlikely to see repeated in the twenty-first century. Clearly the ad appeals to one specific gender. (And in 1980, no one disputed the notion that there were only two.) But as we all know, women eat pancakes, too. So what’s going on?

My mother worked outside the home in 1980; but that was the very beginning of the Boomer-led “working woman” trend of the 1980s. The McDonald’s marketing folks probably figured that men would comprise the main market for fast-food breakfasts, presumably on their way to work.

-ET

April’s woes

This was the scene in my part of the world last night. (The photos below were taken about 5 miles from my house.) Storms moved through the area, with high wind and hail.

My electricity remains on for the time being (fingers crossed). This morning, however, I did drive by a utility pole that had been snapped in half, presumably from last night’s wind. That was less than a mile from my house. Hopefully the electricity stays on.

Never a dull moment in the badlands of Clermont County, Ohio.

-ET

2025: another Year of the Cicada?

For me, 1987 will always be the Year of the Cicada. They were everywhere that summer.

Local FM radio constantly played the jingle, “Snappy Cicada Pizza”. This was a parody of the jingle for “Snappy Tomato Pizza”, and the sort of thing prone to tickle my quirky sense of humor, both then and now.

I was 19 years old in the summer of 1987, and that was my first experience with a cicada outbreak. That summer I was taking courses at the University of Cincinnati. I remember seeing them clinging to the trees on campus. Cicadas don’t live long; and soon their desiccated husks were everywhere.

In the intervening years, I’ve experienced perhaps four or five more major cicada broods. I’m not sure. Novelty, as they say, is a one-shot deal, and the novelty of cicadas has long since faded for me.

Nevertheless, I do notice them. Everyone does. During an outbreak, they are impossible to miss.

According to local news reports, the Indiana-Ohio-Kentucky tristate area will soon be swarmed with yet another brood. It appears, then, that 2025 will be yet another Year of the Cicada.

-ET

On my Japanese TBR list

Whenever I go to Japan, a book haul is always near the top of my to-do list. Japanese-language books are not impossible to acquire in the United States; but it’s seldom as convenient as placing an order on Amazon. 

This title would loosely translate as History of the Showa Era that Citizens Don’t Know.

As the cover image suggests, there are numerous chapters about the Japanese Imperial Navy and World War II.

One of the many rewards of learning a foreign language well is that your potential reading list will be vastly expanded. Some of my favorite books are Japanese-language titles.

-ET

 

Sex appeal and cigarette ads: my 1970s/80s youth

During the 1970s and throughout most of the 1980s, it was common to see full-page cigarette ads in glossy magazines. Advertisements for cancer sticks had already been banned from television, but print ads were still legal, and considered fair game.

Camel ad, circa 1978 to 1983

Much has been said about the “Marlboro Man” over the years. But the Camel Dude (shown above) got a lot more female attention. I remember seeing variations of the above ad in a number of magazines that ended up in my hands during the late 1970s and early 1980s, including Field & Stream, which I read with some regularity.

We can assume that the Camel Dude got lucky on the day presented in the above ad. But one wonders: is he still alive? Perhaps not, with that smoking habit of his.

I was a pre-adolescent and adolescent in those days; and I may have been slightly influenced by the marketing message. A “great-tasting blend of Turkish and domestic tobaccos”, and hot women on the beach? Count me in, said the adolescent version of me.

Speaking of which: I haven’t smoked cigarettes at all as an adult; but I did smoke them on occasion when I was 12 to 13 years old. Another thing about the 1970s/80s: cigarette vending machines were everywhere, and underage people had no difficulty accessing them.

I certainly tried Camels. The hot blonde, as I recall, was not included.

-ET

MTV and Indiana small towns

I am a resident of Cincinnati, Ohio, and a frequent visitor to Indiana. My father grew up in Indiana. I have many childhood memories of family holiday gatherings in Lawrenceburg and nearby rural Switzerland County.

More recently, I took a trip with my dad to Madison, Indiana. Some of the photos from that trip can be found in an earlier post on this blog.

I have always considered myself an “honorary” Hoosier (the nickname of a person from Indiana), because of my familial ties, and also because of my affection for the state.

Family reunion in Switzerland County, Indiana, 1987.

But there are famous Hoosiers, too.  John Cougar Mellencamp was born in 1951 in Seymour, Indiana, and he grew up there. Mellencamp, now in his seventies, is a proud son of Indiana. He has long incorporated small-town Indiana into his musical brand.

Mellencamp was one of the most popular solo artists of my teenage years. He was also a frequent presence on MTV. (This was back when MTV actually played music videos, as every Gen Xer will remind you.)

Many of Mellencamp’s songs and MTV videos incorporated small-town themes. Whenever possible, he inserted an Indiana-related Easter egg or two. I have become aware of some of these only decades later.

Consider, for example, the MTV video for “Hurts So Good”. This song hit number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1982. In the summer and fall of that year, it was hard to turn on FM radio without hearing “Hurts So Good” within the hour.

The “Hurts So Good” MTV video was also popular on MTV. Little did I know, back then, that this video was filmed in the small town of Medora, Indiana. Medora is close to Seymour, where John Cougar Mellencamp grew up, and about ninety minutes from Lawrenceburg, where my father grew up.

The lesson here, for me, is that great art—and great artists—can come from anywhere. John Cougar Mellencamp would not have been the songwriter and musician he became, had he spent his formative years in Los Angeles or New York.

Many people grow up in small town or rural environments and do not find art, of course. But it is a mistake to assume that every denizen of LA is working on a screenplay, or that every NYC resident is an aspiring novelist.

-ET

Yes, Jeep “ducking” really is a thing

I was in a minor accident in January. As a result, my Toyota Venza spent a week in the body shop for repairs. During that time, I drove a rental vehicle, as provided for under the terms of my insurance policy.

When I arrived at the Enterprise office, I was given two choices: a Chevrolet Equinox or a Jeep Wrangler. I had to make an on-the-spot decision.

Without any hesitation, I opted for the Jeep. The Equinox, I knew, would be another hyper-computerized, overly engineered vehicle marketed at suburbanites. Boring! But the Jeep Wrangler would be, for me, a novel driving experience. I had never driven a Jeep before, nor even ridden in one.

The novelty got to me. Driving a Jeep is a fun exercise in driving. And I do mean exercise. When you drive one of the basic Jeep models, you feel every bump in the road. Steering the Wrangler reminded me of steering my grandfather’s 1975 Ford pickup truck, back in the day.

But hey, it was an adventure. For a few days, I imagined myself as a Jeep owner.

Then I learned about this Jeep ducking thing. When I was first told about it, I thought that my interlocutor was pulling my leg.

Then I started paying attention: I began to notice Jeeps with little rubber ducks mounted on their dashboards. They were everywhere. 

If you’re unaware of the trend, look around a parking lot sometime: you’ll see that at least half of all Jeeps have dashboards adorned with rubber ducks.

What was up with that? I wondered. Or, in the words of someone on Quora: “Why do people who drive jeeps all put those stupid ducks on their dash?”

Apparently, Jeep owners leave ducks on each others’ vehicles as a way of expressing their esprit de corps. And when a fellow Jeep owner gifts you a duck, you’re supposed to mount it on your dashboard.

Jeep ducking is just a bit too cutesy for my tastes. But it’s harmless; and if Jeep owners enjoy doing this, why not?

Nevertheless, I’m glad that there is no similar custom of placing bath toys on Toyotas. No way I would drive around with rubber ducks mounted on the dashboard of my Venza.

-ET