The End of the Road

Three weeks ago I reached the end of the road -- after thirty-five thousand miles.

I fear that chronic pain -- which suddenly lit up my entire kneecap like an exploding firecracker at the outset of a five-mile run along New York City's Hudson River Parkway and never moderated -- has terminated my running career forever.

Never was there a more improbable athlete.

Imagine if you will twenty-eight years of persistent futility and repressed frustration for a cerebral youngster, gawky adolescent, and insecure twenty-something who, lacking the requisite hand-eye coordination, tried and failed at every conceivable individual or team sport -- kickball, volleyball, softball, baseball, basketball, football, tennis, and golf (and would have suffered the same fate at soccer if it had not been regarded at that time as the inferior pastime of decadent Europeans) -- who preferred hoisting such weighty tomes as Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist and William Swinton's Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac to misdirecting a round or oval spheroid of any description, and who gazed wistfully at the bevy of buxom beauties attracted like honeybees to the swift, the graceful, the muscular, and the heroic.

Resigned to my pedantic, introverted personality, I assumed I had renounced strenuous exertion forever upon completing two years of Phys. Ed. at E. C. Glass High School. But, unbeknownst to me at the time of matriculation, the freshman curriculum at Washington and Lee University in 1965 included not only early-morning three-mile "Turkey Trots" through field and forest but also subduing four stubborn 440's on a track in a stressful eight minutes lest one be found lacking sufficient stamina to be awarded a diploma, in spite of four years of academic excellence.

I swore upon graduation that I would never again physically extend myself beyond a fast-paced perambulation of my family furniture stores.

In 1976, after a six-year apprenticeship as boss's son, order-taker (as opposed to salesperson), floorwalker (and furniture mover), and assistant manager, I leapfrogged straight to the top -- and took on the supervision of eight Schewel stores in the Shenandoah Valley. Whereas I had previously been on my feet most of the time, I now found myself behind the wheel of an automobile sometimes five hours a day.

Coincident with this sea change, the running frenzy swamped Lynchburg, with a host of my contemporaries (many of whom were ex-jocks longing to recapture their former glory) jumping on board the wave, joining hordes of crazed runners tracking the murderous hills of the Virginia Ten-Miler, twice passing my Langhorne Road neighborhood on their jaunt from E.C. Glass High School to Riverside Park and back, their perspiring bodies and excruciating grimaces an ominous sign to all who might venture there.

Wary of a sedentary lifestyle, spurred on by an invisible but insistent peer pressure, invigorated by an epiphany -- that here at last was a sport which entailed no more agility than simply placing one foot in front of another, which required no skillful manipulation of extraneous equipment, like balls, bats, clubs, or racquets, and which one could enjoy in the solitary, non-competitive realm of his own consciousness -- I laced up a pair of old tennis shoes and drove to the nearest track.

Twenty-eight at the time, of slight build, never a smoker, and unencumbered by the lingering irritations of youthful sports injuries, I rounded into shape much faster than I ever anticipated -- buying the first of probably one hundred pair of running shoes, graduating from the track to the adjacent sidewalks and roadways, stretching my distance effortlessly to one, two, three, and then an amazing four miles, upon which I declared myself indisputably a stud.

And why not? For the first time in my life, when it came to athletics, I was no longer the last man standing when teams were chosen, a bench-warmer, an outcast, a -- the word was just coming into vogue -- nerd. (Maybe it was time for revenge.)

In fact, while the physical rewards of recreational running are self-evident -- weight control, expanded lung capacity, heart conditioning -- the psychological benefits may be more gratifying: a cognitive sense of well-being, a feeling of accomplishment, mental stress relief, increased self-confidence and self-esteem. There is no doubt that running -- the first sport I ever played with competence -- earned me the respect of friends and acquaintances and shepherded me through any number of melancholy life-cycle events -- divorce, death of a parent, business setbacks.

In the beginning I shoehorned my runs into a busy schedule, usually in the evening, sometimes at lunch -- which produced some strange situations, like the time I was driving home from Culpeper, Virginia, stopped at a high school in Madison, changed clothes in the car, ran five miles on the track, and completed my trip in sweat-soaked attire.

I soon realized that on any given afternoon or evening some activity was likely to interfere with my daily run. Obsessed as I was, I swiftly overcame my aversion to rising early, and adopted morning runs as mandatory for the committed runner.

Of course it's cooler in the morning -- a relief during midsummer scorchers -- and there are fewer cars to dodge. But, above all, a morning runner never has to miss a day, as long as he's out the door sixty minutes sooner than he would have to be otherwise. Just six weeks ago I rose at 2:30 AM to get my run in before catching a 5:30 AM flight -- a sign of dementia, to be sure, yet a not much more ungodly hour than the 3:30 AM I would be waking up at anyway.

It didn't take me long to become as compulsive about running as I was about other pursuits -- like schoolwork (when I was younger), my career at Schewels, and reading books. As noted above, I began running every day, keeping a diary of miles consumed, searching for that perfect shoe (I settled on variations of the Nike Air Structure with a Spenco Orthotic, but now swear by the Brooks Addiction, courtesy of Jeff F. at Riverside Runners), dropping my weight from its post-college 155 lbs. to a svelte (or scrawny) 138, and testing my mettle and a long-dormant competitive spirit in flights of speed and endurance.

Like the contagious appetite for Beanie Babies, suddenly every locality and non-profit was eager to capitalize on the burgeoning popularity of a heretofore obscure avocation, luring swarms of runners to the starting blocks of a proliferation of races. I remember ten-k's in Appomattox, Altavista, Bedford, Timberlake, and Boonsboro -- as I streaked to ever-faster personal bests -- and, of course, the Hill City's signature event, the Virginia Ten-Miler, organized by a group of local addicts including guru and running-store entrepreneur Rudy S. In its heyday, under the sponsorship of First Colony Life and its CEO, one-time collegiate track star but by then gleefully rotund George Stewart, the race offered a $10,000 purse and drew upwards of 5000 entrants.

With my newly-discovered athletic prowess, I set a goal of a blazing sixty-minute Ten-Miler -- pushing myself relentlessly up and down the Langhorne Road hills all through the sweltering summer months and subjecting myself to punishing speed-work on the Linkhorne School track, only to fall a tantalizing two minutes short, clocking a never-to-be-duplicated 61:59 in the early '80's.

No running logbook would be complete without at least one twenty-six miler, and so I began training for the Virginia Beach Shamrock Marathon in 1982, hoping to break three hours which would qualify me for the ultimate amateur race, the Boston Marathon. Alas, six months of rigorous training -- consisting of 55 miles a week (one 20, two 10's, and three 5's), mostly along the Ten-Miler course with an occasional, gloriously diversionary long run out Trents Ferry Road to Holcomb Rock Road and back -- came to naught and bitter disappointment when I suffered a minor but hobbling stress fracture in my leg thirty days before the race.

A glutton for punishment, I ramped up for another try the following year on a miserably cold rainy St. Patrick's Day (or thereabouts) in March. After a tolerable six-mile warm-up, the course branched off into the George Washington National Forest along a dirt path which by the time back-in-the-pack runners like me got there had deteriorated into a thick splattering sludge, turning nimble joggers into lead-footed sloggers. Ten miles further on I emerged from the dense foliage and rounded Fort Story, only to be smacked side-on by a chilling blast rolling in from the Atlantic, which, adding insult to injury and blurred vision and ocular anguish to an already surreal experience, dislodged one of my contac lenses. (I ran in glasses forever after.)

Following expert advice, I had never run past twenty miles in training and true to form hit the wall six miles from home. Like a wind-up doll on a dying battery, I mechanically plodded on, staggering across the finish line in delirious exhaustion, my lungs gasping for oxygen, my calves and thighs clenched in a vise of pain as the grim digital reaper ticked off 3:13, a respectable 7:42 pace but depressingly short of my goal.

Like an Irish binge, the Shamrock left me with a debilitating hangover -- mysterious nagging ailments, a peculiar listlessness, a skittish disenchantment with runnin, even though I still managed to pull myself out of bed every morning and hit the pavement. Having staked my claim to legitimacy whenever devotees gathered to swap tall tales, I decided that I had had enough of marathon, and that if I was to preserve my body for the long run into my sixties and seventies, I needed to ease back on the mileage and investigate some less bone-jarring modes of exercise. A new buzzword, cross-training, chased me to the YMCA, where I tempered two or three days of running with swimming (a mile, slowly), stationary cycling, and light suspended-weight lifting, which satisfied my monomania, toned (rather than strengthened) my upper body, and kept me injury-free, until now.

In 1983 I passed another milestone in my running career when I captured a first-place trophy, a solitary standard-bearer of athletic superiority lost amidst a spate of similar honors earned by my triple-threat stepdaughter for her accomplishments in tennis, softball, and track and field. A few nights ago I spied the graceful, gold-plated (or painted) figure astride a gray-stone pedestal boasting a small engraved medallion: the NHFA All-Industry Convention Berkline Challenge -- a 5-kilometer dash through Washington, D.C.'s Anacostia Park which I licked in a blistering seventeen-plus minutes, besting about twenty women and four men, the fastest of whom I blazed past at the halfway point en route to victory. The moral of this historic footnote: furniture dealers are as deficient in foot-speed as they are in natural intelligence.

Exploring places like Washington, D.C. -- or wherever one's business or pleasure travels take him -- is one of the constant delights of compulsive running. I approach each new venue fraught with anxiety, desperately seeking a sidewalk or bike path or at least four wide lanes of slow-moving traffic and thus avoid the nasty vehicular flow, especially during the predawn hours, lest I be compelled to resort to the bane of the serious runner: the monotonous fixed roll of an on-site treadmill.

Like photographs in a scrapbook, running routes from past ports of call are more clearly etched in my memory than their typical tourist attractions.

My running has propelled me into the depths of Central Park, where I discovered pastoral retreats, topographical challenges, multi and horticultural diversity, and expansive fields of dreams;

Along San Francisco's bustling Fisherman's Wharf, after I had been warned to turn left out of my hotel, lest I stumble into the shadowy Tenderloin District;

Past one stunning antebellum home after another lining the placid Charleston Harbor;

Through the bleak inner city of Savannah, Ga., which sadly diminishes the elegance of the historic downtown it so tightly encircles;

Along Amsterdam's canals and into a crowded park one crisp January morning after an overnight flight from JFK en route to Nairobi;

Through the rustic town of Bagnoregio, in the province of Viterbo, glancing back at the awesome sight of Civita "teetering atop a pinnacle in a vast canyon ruled by wind and erosion," (Rick Steves Europe) and linked to its sister by the footbridge I have just crossed and out into the Italian countryside, attracting the curious gaze of early risers opening their shops for the day;

Three times around a vacant Disney World parking lot not yet open to family fun-seekers, all the while cursing the Orlando Hotel where I was staying for its inhospitable lack of sidewalks and trails and its outrageous $35-a-day fitness center fee;

Past the baleful stares of the shivering homeless, huddled against winter's grip under their ragged cloaks, scattered like boulders along the gray Chicago lakefront;

On another cold morning, into a bone-chilling wind as I fought my way up Philadelphia's Schuylkill River Trail from Rocky's Art Museum and back;

And past the grand Caribbean residences of Michael Jordan and Oprah Winfrey (or so I was told) while circling the Ocean Club Course on Paradise Island.

I have run through residential neighborhoods from the grandiose to the decrepit, through commercial strips of the Nordstrom variety to those fronted by tattoo parlors and tire stores, through the seediest downtown areas to the most luxurious, in places like Playa del Carmen (Mexico), Las Vegas, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Vancouver, New Orleans, San Diego, Montreal, Boston, Key West, Naples, Boca Raton, Dallas, Myrtle Beach, Virginia Beach, West Palm Beach, Newport Beach, Wilmington, N.C., Wilmington, Del., Columbia, S.C., Charlotte, N.C., and Scottsdale, Ar.

Traveling my fifty-one stores, I have staked out the best running courses in several key towns, even if that might require a sixty-mile morning drive to my final destination: from the Travelodge in Winchester, Va., past Shenandoah University through Jim Barnett Park; from the Comfort Inn in Franklin, Va., down an Armory Drive lined with secondary strip centers (one housing a Schewels), a new Wal-Mart, and a new Lowe's, and into an eclectic neighborhood of vintage and contemporary homes; from the Best Western in Emporia, Va., through a 1970's lakefront development and into the quiet countryside, where only a barking dog or an isolated farmhouse disturbs one's solitude; from the Comfort Inn in Washington, N.C., thirty miles from the nearest Schewel store, along a slowly-recovering Main Street one block from the Pamlico River, across a small inlet, and into the hamlet of Little Washington, where I pass by twenty elegant gabled mansions whose front yards stretch a football field across the narrow road to the tree-lined river, a scene so pastoral and enchanting I think how delightful a second home there would be.

In 1989, I learned that one can't run everywhere. I was in Taipei, Taiwan, having been lured there by a salesman friend, ostensibly on a buying trip, although visiting our suppliers' ramshackle cottage factories left me less than enthusiastic about their finished products and merely served as a prelude to a more pleasurable excursion to Hong Kong. Not only did I look like the Ugly American after mustering enough courage to venture forth in nylon shorts, tee-shirt, and canvas shoes, I found the sidewalks so clogged with frantic pedestrians, the streets so choked with miniature automobiles and reckless cyclists, that I was literally stopped in my tracks. I bowed my head, slunk back to my hotel room, and socked away the running garb for the duration of the trip.

The Grove Park Inn is a stately, sprawling gray stone resort nestled in the hills of Western North Carolina, or should I say perched atop one of those hills, since it is the site of the steepest climb I have ever encountered in over thirty years of running. One innocently exits the lobby and jogs smoothly past several service buildings before gliding down a winding, switchback road which, after about a mile, deposits him in a middle-class neighborhood. From there, it's an easy mile-and-a-half to downtown Asheville. The return trip is grueling, slowing even the most seasoned Virginia Ten-Miler to a crawl, as he plods steadily upward and onward, peering vainly around each wicked curve for the elusive crest and welcome relief.

I never feared cold weather until one January morning several years in Woodstock, Vermont, where my wife and I were combining skiing at Killington (for her, that is; I spent those days warmly ensconced in the local library, my nose buried in a book) with a visit to her brother. My impression of Woodstock is that it spends three months of the year with no less than six inches of snow on the ground and the temperature never higher than twenty degrees. Dump trucks and front-end loaders regularly patrol the narrow streets to make passable at least one lane of traffic.

For three straight mornings the thermometer hovered at zero -- and, if that wasn't cold enough, on the way out I was battling a savage fifteen mile-per-hour wind, reducing the effective temperature an equivalent minus-fifteen degrees. Fortunately, I was well-prepared, having donned long underwear, tight leggings, two tee shirts, a double-insulated jacket, wool gloves, and a pullover fleece cap, although the piercing wind seemed to penetrate every covered surface. But I didn't have a face mask. I had never before felt it necessary to wear one -- until that day, when the brutal combination of wind and cold froze my skin like the touch of dry ice. Heading home with the wind at my back was no less daunting, yet in comparison it felt like a sauna.

My fanaticism reached its apogee (or perigee!) three years ago when some early-rising Egyptians may have spotted a half-naked Jewish man running through the streets of Cairo. (Since he was only half-naked, the traditional evidence of his religion was well-concealed.) Creeping surreptitiously out of my room at the historic Mena House Hotel, I left my wife in a sphinx-like slumber, for surely she would have barricaded the door had she suspected my intention of endangering my life -- although in fact the quizzical natives were probably more terrified of me than I was of them. My justification for such rash behavior: I was hell-bent upon preserving my fatuous record of 2000 consecutive days (six years) of running, swimming, or working out. (Alas, the DiMaggio-like streak suffered an ignominious end eighteen months later when I missed an overnight flight to Rome, was rerouted through London's Heathrow, and arrived twelve hours late.)

Since our arrival in Egypt, I had managed to persevere on treadmills at the Four Seasons Hotel in Cairo and on board the mini-liner on which we had cruised the Nile, and in fact my internal compass had zeroed in on the Hotel fitness center until two inoperable treadmills set it off in panicky gyrations. With no other choice, I slunk apprehensively through the gated entrance and set off boldly in search of the Great Pyramids.

Of the few people shuffling about that morning, all had their entire bodies clothed and there was nary a runner in sight -- Muslim, Christian, Jew, or agnostic. Near a bus stop a small crowd coalesced around the sizzle and smoke of an entrepreneur grilling beef or pork and hawking it for breakfast. I breathed a little easier when I noticed through the gloom the outstretched wings of a police or military complex -- where the officers on duty imparted a momentary sense of security. A credible sighting of the Pyramids might have excused my folly, but, even if I had stumbled upon the right road, the darkness obscured them as thankfully it did me for most of those nerve-wracking fifty minutes.

Flaunting my wife's disbelief and distress -- all in the interests of my safety -- I was too guileless to lie, and suppressing my own trepidation, I repeated the adventure the next day.

Equally intimidating but leavened with a dash of humor was a run I took while on a photo safari to Kenya in 1999. My regimen had been curtailed in Nairobi by impassable roadways and in our tented camps by pregnant warnings not to venture outside their confines -- until one free afternoon I decided to attempt a run along the perimeter of our current spacious grounds, staying inside the wire fence, of course.

I could not circle the entire camp; in one direction, I could run only as far as a waste disposal area adjacent to the kitchen facilities; in the other, access was blocked by some permanent structure. On my first semi-circuit, I observed three or four large chimpanzees (or some member of the ape family) outside the camp making a beeline to the same garbage dump that marked my stopping point -- which really didn't trouble me, since an electrified barrier protected me.

I had turned around and was retracing my steps when I heard a heavy-footed thumping sound behind me which seemed to get progressively louder, as if I was being chased down by some relentless stalker. Having seen no other creatures in the vicinity but the chimpanzees and having coincidentally had to sidestep a few treacherous cow pies, I fell prey to a fertile imagination. A chill shot up and down my spine at the thought of being overtaken and attacked by one or more ravenous apes. I picked up my pace, but the thumping only got louder. Heeding one philosopher's sage advice, I refused to look back, anticipating certain embarrassment and perhaps disaster, when a strapping young man sans tee shirt and sporting a deep tan and blond crew cut -- whom I had never seen before -- burst past me with a friendly nod.

Cowering in relief, I hastened to my tent and vowed to put away my running shoes until safely back on American soil.

In answer to the question "Why," the essence of the sport was distilled in my next-to-last ten-mile run six weeks ago. I was attending a meeting on Mackinac Island, a 100-square-mile spit of land in Northern Michigan anchored at the confluence of Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. It is accessible only by ferry (or a tiny landing strip) from which one disembarks to make his way by foot, bicycle, horse, or carriage (no automobiles are permitted) through the timeless picturesque village of clapboard fudge shops, art galleries, souvenir stores, and restaurants up to his five-star accommodations at the magnificent Grand Hotel overlooking its storied gardens and the sun-drenched bay.

I was told that an eight-mile road encircled the island along the shoreline, but, too stubborn to ask directions, I had been unable to locate it on my first morning run -- a five-miler which took me through town, up past legendary Fort Mackinac, and across the center of the island to a cemetery, at which point I turned back. The next day, however, determined to run ten, I kept going, discovering the landing strip and a golf course, scaling the island's summit, continuing downhill to an intersection at the water's edge, and reaching my five-mile marker (forty-five minutes) just as the sun began to melt away the darkness.

I faced a minor dilemma. Should I go back the way I had come and end up at the hotel a certain ninety minutes from my start, or turn left or right on the road I had been seeking, which should take me around the island, but at some unknown distance back to town? I chose left, and was justly rewarded as for five miles I enjoyed a breathtaking vista of the sun shimmering in the water and the gentle waves washing up on the rocky beach. Forested hills rose above me on the land side, their virginity spoiled by an isolated home or two intruding upon the pristine setting.

With about a mile to go, I passed a school, rounded a curve, and there they were: the familiar stores and shops I had left behind ninety minutes ago.

Two weeks later I pulled up lame.

If I'm never able to run another mile, I'll not regret any one of the 35,000 in my rear view mirror. I have seen, felt, enjoyed, and learned so much more than I ever would have if I had not taken those first tentative steps on the Linkhorne Middle School track thirty-three years ago.

But hope springs eternal -- in the human breast, in the runner's heart.

I saw Dr. E., Lynchburg's foremost orthopedist, at a party last week and told him my month-old foreboding had come true. When he had asked me then if I was running the Ten-Miler, I had answered, "Yes, unless something breaks, and I have to come see you."

He worked me into his busy schedule, and the news is not all bad. I have chondromalacia patella, Runner's Knee, inflammation under the kneecap, not arthritis as I had feared. The doc has prescribed rest (ouch!), anti-inflammatory medication, the intermittent wearing of a knee sleeve, and physical therapy to strengthen the quadriceps.

"With a little luck," he says, "and your using some common sense, we'll soon have you back on the road again."

Health Scare

Echoing the Guns of August -- and Frank Rich's masthead in last Sunday's New York Times, which I anticipated in draft form -- the health scare wars have escalated at warp speed, bolting the hallowed halls of Congress, swamping the airwaves, and laying waste to town meetings coast-to-coast, where the battle has been joined for the hearts and minds -- and hips, knees, spines, and, lungs -- of America.

It's democracy and demagoguery in action. Health care reform -- the newest linchpin of the Obama administration -- is under fire.

Watching proponents and opponents of Congress's extreme one-thousand-page makeover of the nation's health care system lambaste each other and their lawmakers with hyperbole, distortions, and fearmongering would be comical if the matter at hand were not so serious -- and expensive.

As I wade into the murky waters of this complex and bewildering subject, an introductory disclosure would seem to be in order.

In one respect I am representative of the myriad conflicts and irrationalities inherent in the American health care system. As an employer paying seventy percent of the health care costs of 534 of my 716 employees through self-funded insurance administered by Anthem, my interests certainly lie in containing those costs in the areas where I operate my fifty-one stores, thereby saving me money.

But as a volunteer board member of Centra Health, the monolithic and monopolistic regional hospital system which serves the city of Lynchburg and its four adjacent counties, I must promote its viability and profitability, which require continuous investment in elaborate facilities and state-of-the-art technology, all in the name of increased market share and superior quality -- but undoubtedly at some higher cost to employers like me.

In all fairness, Centra Health is an efficient and effective provider of health care services -- at least according to available comparative data. Its 2006 Medicare reimbursement per enrolee was $6399, $450 less than the Virginia average, $2000 less than the national average, and $4000 less than Dallas, Texas.

Which doesn't make my own company's health care costs any easier to swallow.

I find it both amusing and depressing -- and tellingly symptomatic of the system's opaqueness -- that so many providers -- both physicians and administrators -- harbor the illusion that it is the insurance company who is paying their bill (and, sadly, most employees are drinking the same Kool-Aid) -- growing money for them as facilely as tomatoes on a vine. They conveniently forget, ignore, or discount the source of the premiums -- like the physical therapist who told my brother-in-law when he wanted to forgo post-heart-surgery treatment: "Don't worry, your insurance will take care of it," only to have the latter set the record straight. "Technically, yes, but practically, no, because my wife's company is really writing the check."

Similarly, sitting in Centra Health board meetings, I have had to restrain myself when I hear physicians berate insurance companies for refusing coverage for various procedures or medications -- jeopardizing, they claim, the well-being of their patients (and their own incomes) -- denials which may be saving me money. (Cynics, of course, will contend that these are phantom savings and merely feed the insatiable maw of the evil insurer.)

Maybe the cynics are right; an examination of my company's financial statements for the past four years indicates a steady rise in health insurance costs -- in spite of declining sales revenue and employee head count.

Schewel Furniture Company's health insurance costs average $270,000 a month, or $530 for each of the 534 employees who participate in the plan. (The total number of lives insured, including spouses and dependents, is 856.) Employees contribute about $50,000 (or $90 each) per month (plus a $1000 deductible and up to $4500 in co-pays), leaving Schewel with a monthly health insurance bill of $220,000, and an annual one of $3,000,000.

This latter number represents a 24% increase since 2006, a period during which revenues declined 10% and payroll 6.5%. Consequently, health insurance costs as a percent of the company's payroll now stand at 12%, up from 9% three years ago.

For small businesses like Schewel, who, for competitive reasons, must provide health insurance to their employees, this trend -- driven by utilization (and overutilization), technological advancements, and cost shifting from underfunded public reimbursements to private insurers -- is unsustainable. When it reaches the tipping point, those businesses will be compelled to drop insurance altogether (as many have already done) or raise employee contributions, deductibles, and co-pays to levels at which many will opt of their plans -- outcomes which will increase the aggregate number of uninsured and further compound the cost-shifting problem.

For many individuals and families unable to participate in group plans and ineligible for Medicare or Medicaid, the cost of purchasing health insurance -- which is not tax-deductible to them as it is for businesses -- can be exorbitant, and the policies themselves filled with more holes than a slice of Swiss cheese. So testifies my son David, a self-employed film editor in New York City, who pays $300 a month to an insurer he fears will drop him any day or refuse to cover an expensive procedure.

In recent town hall meetings, President Obama, trumpeting the need for reform, introduced his own witnesses, insurance-company victims like Nathan Wilkes, whose six-year-old son's treatments for hemophilia have exceeded his $1,000,000 lifetime policy cap; Katie Gibson, who was dropped by her insurer when she received a cancer diagnosis; and Lori Hitchens, who cannot find insurance because she has a pre-existing condition. (Of course, the President neglected to tell his audience that expanded public coverage of such individuals will be borne by them, the taxpayers.)

While defenders of the status quo proudly maintain that Americans, to quote former President Bush, "have the best health care system in the world," certain troubling statistics suggest otherwise.

The United States dominates the biotechnology field, accounting for 3/4's of the world's revenues and spending in research and development. It produces more new pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and affiliated biotechnology than the Western European countries combined. (Wikipedia) According to a study by the Commonwealth Fund, the United States ranks first in providing the "right care" as defined by standard clinical guidelines and earns high marks for preventive measures like Pap smears, mammograms, blood tests, and cholesterol checks. Most Americans, including this one, when faced with a life-threatening illness, would rather be treated in this country than anywhere else. (New York Times, 8/12/07)

On the other hand, the United States spends $2.4 trillion per year on health care, $8000 per person, two-and-a-half times more than any other advanced country. But, reports the Commonwealth Fund, "it ranks last or next-to-last when compared with five other nations -- Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, and the U.K. -- on most measures of performance, including quality of care and access to it."

It has 47 million people without health insurance (who do receive care in emergency rooms) and many more with poor coverage. It has the greatest disparity in the quality of care given to the richer and poorer of its citizens. It ranks last among twenty-three nations in infant mortality rates, and near the bottom in life expectancy at age sixty. In an eight-country comparison, it ranks last in years of potential life lost to circulatory diseases, respiratory diseases, and diabetes, and has the second-highest death rate from bronchitis, asthma, and emphysema. Its primary care doctors lag behind their compatriots in other advanced nations in adopting electronic medical records and prescribing medications electronically. (New York Times, 8/12/07) Every year 100,000 patients die in U.S. hospitals due to infection and 200,000 from blood clots following surgery or illness. (David Goldhill, The Atlantic, September 2009)

Such a cost-benefit analysis cries out for reform.

Meanwhile, other surveys report that seventy percent of Americans are satisfied with their health care.

And why wouldn't they be?

An estimated eighty percent of Americans have insurance -- either through employer-funded plans or Medicare -- and for relatively small premiums (less than $100 per month, in the case of my employees), they receive soup-to-nuts care. In spite of the glaring deficiencies noted above -- about which most people are blithely ignorant, until a family member falls victim to a medical error -- what's not to like about walking into a hospital or doctor's office (other than the inconvenience of being pricked and poked) for any minor or major procedure knowing full well that someone else will be paying most or all of that bill as well as for any number of new benefits?

It's another illusion, because the sad truth is that "our nation's health care bill is too big to be paid by anyone but us -- all of us." (Goldhill)

With employer-based health insurance costs -- on average, $12,000 per family -- up 78 percent since 2001, employers like Schewel have no choice but to limit raises and entry-level wages in order pay their insurance premiums. The total cost is startling. If one assumes over a forty-year period that an individual's earnings, insurance premiums, Medicare taxes, and out-of-pocket costs increase at a modest three percent annually, while his salary will grow from $30,000 to $107,000, he and his employer will have paid over his lifetime for his family's health care $1.77 million. (Goldhill)

"As a nation, we now spend 18% of GDP on health care. In 1966 Medicare and Medicaid made up 1% of government spending; now that figure is 20% . . . Already the federal government spends eight times as much on health care as it does on education, twelve times what it spends on food aid to children and families, thirty times what it spends on law enforcement . . . For families, household expenditures on health care exceed those on housing." (Goldhill)

There is no shortage of culprits in this race to insolvency.

A good place to start is the health care industry: all the doctors, hospitals, pharmacists, drug companies, equipment suppliers, nurses, and home health agencies drinking from this $2.4 trillion trough, each group determined to maintain its position and resistant to any financial penalties that reform might entail. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Abraham Verghese quotes this axiom of medical economics: "Every dollar spent on medical care is a dollar of income for someone." (To which I would add, as an employer footing the bills, this corollary: every dollar spent on medical care is an opportunity cost, a dollar that could have been invested somewhere else.)

Helping to fill the trough are insurance companies and the federal government.

Unlike other forms of insurance -- life, property, liability -- "in which the many who face the risk of loss from a catastrophic event share the cost incurred by the few who actually suffer the loss," health insurance is comprehensive; that is, "it is the primary payment mechanism not just for expenses that are large and unexpected, but for those that are nominal and routine . . . Since insurance is probably the most complex, costly, and distorted method of financing any activity, its use to fund virtually all care is itself a major cause of health care's high expense." (Goldhill)

For example, for every two doctors in the U.S, there is one health insurance employee. In 2006, it cost $500 per person to administer health insurance. Inefficient claims processing wastes $210 billion annually, according to the Price Waterhouse Coopers Health Research Institute. Many small businesses like Schewel are compelled to employ at least one human resource staffer to advise and assist workers in filing claims.

Moral hazard -- the tendency for people to alter their behavior and take less care with their decisions when risk has been minimized or eliminated -- adds more excess cost to health insurance. With little of their own money at stake, consumers are easily enticed by the newest drug, device, or procedure. They defer to the infinite wisdom and revered authority of physicians who will benefit financially by ordering diagnostic tests, performing surgery, and scheduling follow-up treatments (some of which, admittedly, are measures undertaken for malpractice defense).

Insured and uninsured Americans spend similar amounts of their own money on health care each year --$654 and $583 respectively -- but they spend wildly different amounts of other people's money -- $3800 and $1100 respectively.

While proponents of expanded federal health insurance -- which currently funds fifty percent of health care through Medicare and Medicaid -- claim to be able to cut costs by covering the uninsured and streamlining administration, skeptics are wary. And well they should be. Government interference in the health care industry over the past fifty years has increased costs rather than contained them.

In 1954, Congress made health plans tax-deductible to businesses without making the resulting benefits taxable to employees. Employer-based health insurance became the most affordable method for funding all types of health care, not just catastrophic care. Seeking a competitive advantage, employers began offering very generous plans with low co-pays -- encouraging patients and their doctors to opt for "excessive tests and other inappropriately expensive forms of care," and consequently raising private health care costs, it is estimated, by as much as 35%. (Martin Feldstein, Wall Street Journal, 8/19/09)

Furthermore, in designing Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, the government essentially adopted the comprehensive insurance model, launching the great health care inflationary spiral and injecting more distortion and irrationality into the marketplace.

"The government regularly tries to cap costs by limiting Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement rates to providers," yielding two perverse consequences. To compensate for below-cost reimbursements, providers must raise rates to private insurers; and they "may perform excess services and steer patients toward higher-priced, more lightly-regulated treatment." (Goldhill) Even President Obama, who wants to expand government's role, pointed to the problems of a system "in which the more tests and services are provided, the more money is paid," a system "which pays generously when you do something to a patient, but is stingy when you do something for a patient." (Verghese)

Bureaucratic regulatory and reimbursement policies are static, inefficient, and slow to respond to market conditions. For example, because Medicare richly rewards specialists who do lots of tests and procedures rather than generalists, in the field of geriatrics, there is a shortage of generalists who address "the cluster of common patient problems related to aging," while seniors overuse specialists not focused on their specific health needs. (Goldhill)

Finally, of course, legislators and regulators do not operate in a vacuum, and are prey to the relentless pressure and unlimited resources of special interest groups. Just two years ago Congress bound Medicare so that its representatives could not negotiate with pharmaceutical companies over the price of drugs, a $500 billion sellout. As a result the cholesterol drug Zocor costs Medicare $1485 for a year's supply, while the Veteran's Administration pays $127. (Stanley Crouch, News and Advance)

So it is that opponents of reform -- exemplified by right-wing commentators indignant at a governmental takeover of the health care system and self-righteous seniors who want to keep the government out of their health care -- have demonized the government, but for the wrong reasons.

Don't the latter know who is paying their health care bills -- fifty percent of the nation's total -- and who is setting their provider reimbursement fees? Do any of these noble free marketers really want to walk away from Medicare and Social Security? And in response to those constitutionalists who question every citizen's "right" to adequate health care, haven't we already acknowledged that right -- for the indigent and for the over-65 crowd?

And for those on the other side of the equation, the wage earners who are feeding the beast rather than making steady withdrawals, don't they realize whose dollars are buying grandma's walker and nursing home care, dollars which will soon exhaust themselves unless more taxes are wrung from already-stretched workers and employers?

The eternal conundrum of our health care system is that while the government -- in surreptitious collusion with insurance companies and providers -- has unintentionally exacerbated the cost problem, only the government wields the power to reduce those costs (although some would argue that in a redesigned system the consumer has that power) -- by garnering concessions in the price of drugs and services (instead of making deals that inflate those prices!) and by minimizing third-party administrative costs. But when a jaundiced public looks at the government's dismal track record, it shakes its collective head and murmurs: No way.

And when presented with one reasonable cost-cutting concept -- end-of-life counseling -- that public, ginned up by the opposition, explodes in outrage.

Far be it from me to endorse death panels, but the fact is that 27% of Medicare dollars are spent during the last year of a person's life. As harsh as it may sound, often the cost of the medical services provided far outdistances the benefits received, primarily because that cost is being borne by some ethereal other entity -- a phenomenon that does not occur with the purchase of any other product or service in our economy.

When George, the 62-year-old father-in-law of a friend of mine, was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer that had spread throughout his body, his doctors informed him and his family that he had six months to live. Thanks to a battery of experimental drugs and treatments, he outlasted their prognostication by a painful six months, heavily sedated, running up hundreds of thousands of Medicare bills.

What this tragic tale of runaway costs demonstrates is that, regardless of whether employer-based insurance continues as the norm or whether public insurance is expanded, two equally distasteful choices confront the American public: control costs by reducing coverage of situations like George's (that is, impose rationing); or increase revenues to pay for the all-inclusive, unlimited care we all think we want and need, either through higher premiums (passed on to employees in the form of higher contributions, deductibles, and co-pays) or higher taxes.

While conservatives these days decry higher taxes as a matter of principle, even they would be hard-pressed to abandon Medicare and Social Security, which are rapidly running out of money. But even moderates and liberals who espouse progressive taxation as a necessary component of a just society are finding it a little unsettling to burden the few -- no matter how wealthy they might be -- with the health bill of 47 million uninsured.

If indeed government insurance is to be expanded, two more palatable alternatives might be to tax employer-provided insurance as income, which would have the added benefit of making those plans less "rich," or to impose a national sales tax, which would make it readily transparent to every citizen whenever he made a purchase that he was funding his own (and others') health care.

A better solution, of course, would be real reform: somehow bringing health care costs under control, so that they are no longer rising more than twice the rate of inflation and consuming an ever larger portion of GDP.

Here are a few of the best ideas surfacing from think tanks.

Providers should make their prices transparent so that consumers understand what treatment really costs. John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, writing in the Wall Street Journal, asks: How many people know the cost of their last doctor's visit or hospital stay? What other goods or services do we buy without knowing how much they will cost us?

David Goldhill, writing in The Atlantic, describes what happened when, preparing for the birth of his second child, he asked for the total cost of the delivery. He was told that the hospital discussed prices only with the uninsured and co-pays only if the payer was applying for federal assistance.

"Keeping prices opaque is one way medical institutions seek to avoid competition and keep prices up. They get away with it because so few consumers pay directly for their services . . . But without transparency on prices -- and the related data on medical outcomes -- efforts to give consumers more control over health care have failed, and always will." (Goldhill)

Secondly, the current fee-for-service reimbursement system -- in which physicians are compensated for individual procedures and treatments, regardless of their quality or experience level or patient outcomes -- fosters overutilization of those services.

Quoting Goldhill: "Many people believe that the U.S. would get better health outcomes at lower cost if payments to providers were structured around the management of health or whole episodes of care, instead of piecework." Under such integrated delivery systems, providers would receive a fixed, lump-sum, capitation-like payment "to treat a patient with a certain condition, based on average costs elsewhere and on what scientific evidence has found to be effective." (David Leonhardt, New York Times) "Private health systems like the Geisinger Clinic and some Blue Cross plans have adopted this model and pay doctors for an entire illness." (Scott Gottleib, Wall Street Journal)

Similarly, writes Atul Guwande in the New Yorker (June 1, 2009): "Decades ago, the Mayo Clinic, in an effort to eliminate the financial barriers to improved patient care, pooled all the money the doctors and the hospital system received and began paying everyone a salary so that the doctors' goal in patient care couldn't be increasing their income. Mayo elevated leaders who focused first on what was best for patients, and then on how to make that financially possible."

"Doctors, nurses, and even janitors sit in meetings, working on ideas to make the service and care better, not to get more money out of patients (and insurers)." The result is one of "the highest-quality, lowest-cost systems in the country."

With this evidence on hand, why can't Medicare offer reimbursement incentives for such collaborative care systems, a first step towards reform?

A third idea is that the government and businesses should promote high-deductible plans and Health Savings Accounts (HSA's) -- from which individuals would pay all but their most catastrophic health costs, which would be covered by some form of private or public insurance.

Whole Foods, for example, pays 100% of the premiums for all full-time employees for its high-deductible health insurance plan and contributes $1800 per year to Health Savings Accounts for employees to spend on health and wellness. Both features encourage employees to spend more wisely on their health care, since they spend their own dollars until their $2500 deductible is used up, and they can roll over unspent HSA dollars from year to year, allowing them to grow over time.

In fact, individual Health Savings Accounts -- rather than single-payer, universal health insurance -- could conceivably replace employer-funded insurance, which, writes Charles Krautheimer, is economically senseless, "an accident of World War II wage and price controls, which, by hindering health-insurance security and portability, decreases labor mobility and overall productivity."

Under a "consumer-driven" care system, as envisioned by David Goldhill, "every American would be required to maintain an HSA, and contribute a minimum percentage of post-tax income -- subject to a floor and cap on total dollar contributions -- which would rise over a working life. All non-catastrophic care would be funded out of HSA's. Once the funds exceeded a ceiling established for each age, account-holders would be allowed to withdraw money for any purpose" -- an incentive for them to spend their health care dollars judiciously.

Such a system, while radical in design and, frankly, clearly impractical in the current environment, could not only alter the way people buy their health care but also revolutionize the delivery of such services, since providers would be compelled to respond to their consumers' new patterns of behavior.

Sadly, however, the virulent partisanship, inflammatory sound bites, and bloated rhetoric of the current debate offer little optimism that any fiscally responsible or global solution to what can no longer be termed anything less than a crisis will emerge. In truth, too many health-care interests groups -- hospitals, insurance companies, professionals, pharmaceuticals, device manufacturers, even advocates for the poor -- have too much at stake to champion, or assent to, meaningful change.

Reform, when it comes, will most likely amount to little more than a costly and ill-conceived iteration of the precarious status quo.

Car Talk

Several days ago, arriving at a political reception for Senator Mark Warner and gubernatorial candidate Creigh Deeds, I found myself parallel-parking between a midnight blue Lexus LS460 and a beaming black BMW 750, taking extreme care that my own vehicle -- the identity of which I am not yet prepared to reveal -- give those two impressive front and rear ends as wide a berth as possible.

Intentionally or not, the owners of these elegant motorcars are making a statement -- about their lifestyle, their pocketbooks, the level of success they have achieved -- although they themselves might contend that, since they can easily afford it, they simply want the smoothest, quietest, and most luxurious ride available. Regardless of motive, far be it from me -- who has over his lifetime driven off dealers' lots no fewer than ten new cars for his personal use (not counting several purchased for spouses) and has recently graduated to one classified (at least by the manufacturer) as a luxury sports sedan -- to disparage or rebuke anyone for enjoying the fruits of his labor and intellect.

In fact, it's reassuring to see these royal chariots rolling through the neighborhood, to know that, in spite of a brutal recession that has seen sales plummet from an annualized rate of 16 million in 2006 to 10 million in 2009 and prompted industry gurus to sound the death knell for America's love affair with the automobile, for many Lynchburgers, the thrill of a new car -- even a $70,000 one -- is as alluring as ever.

Pity the plebeians -- and there must be millions of them -- who have never tasted the sweet intoxication of ravishing a virgin-on-wheels, an unblemished beauty never soiled by a stranger's touch (other than a few demonstration miles), proudly flaunting her sparkling metallic paint job, her shimmering wheel caps, her immaculate interior, her instantaneous start, her powerful, purring engine, and, of course, her musky new car smell. And, no matter the make, model, color, or price, she's uniquely yours, because you picked her out from all the bewildering options that were presented to you as you cruised, inspected, caressed, admired, and test-drove -- until you finally embraced your steely soul-mate.

For many, of course, constrained by economics or informed by a mundane pragmatism, an automobile is merely a utilitarian machine, a convenient (and necessary) mode of transportation. For others, it is a reflection or expression of personality (or one aspired to), and it doesn't take long for an individual to be identified with the car he drives.

My father, for example, loved convertibles, and drove them from the age of forty until his death thirty years later. Cruising topless down Rivermont Avenue in his vintage 1961 white Ford Galaxie -- his shirt-sleeved left arm perched comfortably on the window sill, his wavy locks blowing in the wind, his penetrating gaze mysteriously shielded behind dark-green sunglasses -- not only put his iconoclastic, free-spirited persona on display; it mirrored his social nature, his aversion to solitude.

While he drove that cherished Ford until the wheels fell off, I stood in awe and envy of a childhood friend whose own father was a dedicated car buff -- trading them like baseball cards, desperately searching for the newest all-star, in spite of some bizarre incongruities. I remember him exchanging a stunning, classic Buick Riviera -- which my friend, much to my dismay, refused to borrow one night when given the opportunity because he was embarrassed at its ostentatiousness -- for a tiny, manual-shifting Honda Accord, which he claimed, with remarkable prescience, was the wave of the future.

Another friend had a father, a veterinarian, who was equally foresighted. Needing transportation for his four-legged patients as well as his own barking menagerie -- this in the days before an epidemic of hulking four-door trucks and suv's infested the highways -- he found a body-shop craftsman skilled enough to conjoin the front end of a serviceable Ford sedan and the flatbed of a disabled Dodge pickup, and thus give birth to the first Chevrolet El Camino. Needless to say, it was the most unusual vehicle in town, and drew a slew of wild-eyed stares when my friend and I took it out for a joyride, but, alas, not much interest from the opposite sex.

The other car I remember from my youth -- besides the second-hand baby-blue Falcon, which was my first, and its ill-fated successor, the muscular wine-dark Fairlane GT I wrote about previously in this blog (The Muscle Car, September 19, 2007) -- was another friend's venerable Model A roadster, which, in its perpetual state of loving restoration, fit its owner's eccentric personality to a "T" and became as much a part of him as his winsome smile and habitual skirt-chasing.

Whatever my own car-buying proclivities might reveal about my personality, I will leave to the judgment of my faithful readers -- other than to suggest that some disfunctionality is obviously evident in the startling appearance of a sports car amidst a host of staid sedans and in my perverse fixation on this parade of vehicles that trails behind me, like markers in the rhythm of life.

For example, getting married (in 1971) and settling into my permanent career at Schewel Furniture Company (in 1972) signaled that it was time to put away childish playthings -- specifically, my twice-wrecked, but still potent, throaty muscle car -- in favor of a prosaic, less pretentious, early-seventies Pontiac T-37 (actually, a sporty label for a Tempest), having been convinced by some clever GM marketers that moving from a Ford to a "wide-track" was a step up in status. The car was a depressing muddy brown and sent pangs of regret piercing through my heart whenever I passed a stablemate of the Ford Fairlane GT I had impulsively abandoned.

Having learned a lesson -- temporarily -- I tried to recapture some of that lost glory with my next car, a two-tone, red over white, 1976 Pontiac Le Mans (another racing moniker), purchased for me by Schewel Furniture Company when I began traveling to outlying stores. A happy man, I drove it mercilessly across the state for six or seven years, belying the canard that American cars of that generation were built to fail, egregious examples of planned obsolescence. The only thing that stopped it was a garbage truck, in a cataclysmic denouement that will become a common theme of these motorized musings.

Returning from the Schewel store in Farmville one hazy afternoon, I cut through the Old Concord Turnpike, which runs past the City Landfill, and fell in behind a gargantuan tortoise creeping that way. With the impatience of an aggressive thirty-year-old, I yanked the car across the double yellow center line and mashed the pedal to the metal -- just as the rolling roadblock started to turn left into the landfill.

I learned a couple of lessons that day, the first of which is that in a battle between an invincible garbage truck and a defenseless Pontiac sedan, the sedan loses. My front end crumpled like a paper bag, while upon close inspection, hardly a scratch was visible on the immovable object which had been met by a not very resistible force.

With my seat belt securely fastened, I had not been going fast enough to incur any injury. Extricating myself from the battered car, I gingerly approached the garbage truck and its two semi-shocked occupants, smiled, apologized, accepted responsibility, and proffered my business card. I glibly persuaded them to refrain from calling the authorities and beat a hasty retreat from the scene of the crime and any meddlesome law enforcement investigation.

An hour later, I was safely ensconced in my office, smugly congratulating myself on escaping any nasty citations, when my tranquility was rudely interrupted by the receptionist announcing that I had a visitor. I do not recall whether he was a state trooper or a town cop, only that he was much gentler than he had cause to be.

After I explained the circumstances of the accident, he asked me just how fast I was going when I tried to pass the truck. "About thirty-five," I said, which seemed as reasonably close to the speed limit as I dared confess -- but not very realistic, or convincing, I realized, when the officer calmly informed me that he had measured a fifty-foot skid mark, a dead giveaway to excessive speed.

At that point, I was sure he was about to throw the book at me -- for speeding, for reckless driving, for taking flight, and for just plain lying. He asked me to accompany him to the parking lot, where the sight of my mangled front end -- the pathetic result of my foolish attempt to wrestle a garbage truck -- apparently struck a sensitive chord in his normally impassive heart. Perhaps concluding that I had suffered enough, he dismissed me with a stern lecture and a pregnant warning, condemning me only to a guilty conscience.

I ultimately paid the price for my flagrant misbehavior, as the accident haunted me for many months. Schewels and I decided to trade the car "as is," and, when I took it to a Buick dealership a few days later, the manager on duty offered me what I intuited to be a very generous allowance -- too generous, as it turned out, because when I went back the next day (I had not wanted to make another rash decision) the day manager informed me that his associate had forgotten to deduct for the $1300 damage to the car's front end.

Inexplicably, probably out of frustration, I bought the car anyway -- a stodgy, squared-off Buick Regal or Skylark or Century, coated in an insipid yellow-green that combined the worst of the Harvest Gold and Avocado that were popular on home appliances back in those days.

Buyer's remorse and a subconscious death wish (for the car, that is) quickly set in, which, as much as its poor handling, led to further misfortune within two short years.

Once again, I was in a hurry, returning from Front Royal after taking inventory for a computer conversion -- I had the voluminous reports on board. Navigating the swerves and swales that characterize the two-lane Rt. 231 which connects Sperryville and Madison, now slickened by a steady rain, I took one curve a little too fast for that lumbering Buick. The car did a 180 (or maybe it was a 540, spinning one-and-a-half times), crossed over the highway (where, thankfully, no other car was in the vicinity), slid into a ditch, and slammed the passenger door against a tree -- leaving me miraculously unharmed. A passing car or nearby resident must have called for help (this was in the pre-cell-phone era), because I remember being transported back to the Front Royal store and borrowing a truck to drive home -- with the precious inventory in hand, of course.

Months later I saw the unlucky vehicle. It had been towed to the nearest body shop, repaired, and consigned to the Schewel store in Danville, where the carpet department put thousands of miles on it, shuffling back and forth to customers' homes for measurement and installation.

By that time, I was ready for a change of life, a change of wife (as it turned out), a change of scenery, and a car I was to own and treasure for twenty-six years, a 1983 Mazda RX-7, a pseudo (that is, economical, or poor man's) sports car.

It was classically beautiful, then and now, a low-slung pony with a cramped interior you crawled into like a cockpit, to look out over the long sloping hood and knife-edge front end, on either side of which single headlights would blink open at the twist of a knob attached to the turn signal. It had a detachable sunroof you could crank up for a breath of fresh air, but behind that the cowl-shaped roofline was all glass back to the taillights. The exterior was metallic silver -- the best color for a car; the interior parts -- the leather seating, the plush carpeting blanketing the floorboard and rear platform, the functional dashboard -- were all red, except for the black leather-wrapped steering wheel and five-speed shifter protruding from the center console.

The styling was timeless, evoking as late as five years ago this remark from an elderly woman who was obviously clueless: "What kind of new car is that?"

I bought it (or Schewels did; it was only $13,000 back then) -- why? To give myself a new image, to attract women (I would get a divorce three years later), to express my individuality -- who knows? Except that if it was for any of those reasons, none really worked. It got the looks, all right, but these were probably generated as much by the unlikely person behind the wheel as by the car itself. All I can say with certainty is that it was fun to drive, which I did for about 120,000 miles, up and down the Shenandoah Valley and into the far reaches of Southside Virginia and eastern North Carolina.

Even though I would occasionally pile in my three kids -- one in the passenger seat and two laid out the rear storage area, gazing skyward -- the Mazda wasn't designed for families larger than two, which necessitated my purchasing another vehicle when my ex-wife made off with our station wagon. Struggling to economize, I made another poor choice, a low-mileage two-door Cutlass Supreme, white with a red vinyl top, which our Schewel Credit Vice-President was happy to unload on me so that he could buy a used Jaguar. The car drove reasonably well, but hauling three kids and all their miscellaneous equipment around in a coupe is a daunting task; entering and exiting the back seat, where there wasn't much room to begin with, brought them into dangerous contact with each other, and with me.

While liability undoubtedly rests with the driver rather than the vehicle, attentive readers will easily guess the fate of this GM product. I was an hour north of Myrtle Beach, heading home, bantering with my two sons, aged 13 and 7 at the time, passing through the tiny hamlet of Raemon, North Carolina, dodging thunderstorms, when lightning struck (figuratively speaking, that is) . Once again, rain had dampened the asphalt, and, once again, failing to learn from past misadventures, I swept around a curve on a deserted country road a little too fast for the driver, the car, or the conditions.

We did another 180, took down a state road sign (which I was later billed for), and, deja vu, ended up in a ditch. Although slightly shaken and stirred, each of us was belted in, and no one was hurt. We trudged a mile or so up the road to a quaint country store and called for the requisite tow truck. This time the car was operative, a good thing, since there was no Schewel store within hailing distance.

A few months later, I dumped the Cutlass on some unsuspecting soul for a paltry $1500.

As for the Mazda, it suffered a less violent demise, succeeded by an improbable resurrection. For three hundred miles to Wilmington, Delaware, taking my wife to visit her parents, and for three hundred miles back, I blithely ignored an overheated warning light, just barely limping home before the engine expired altogether. When my mechanic soberly informed me that this was no simple repair job, but required replacing the supposedly indestructible rotary engine I had burnt out in my stubborn negligence, I was compelled to ponder long and hard. Should I say grace over the silver bird and bury it forever, or should I resuscitate it with a rebuilt motor? I chose the latter, of course, manifesting some crazed affection for this inanimate machine.

The trouble with an extra car -- which the Mazda was now relegated to, since I felt neither safe nor comfortable chauffeuring it much further than the five miles between my home and my office -- is that, if one doesn't drive it very much, its parts get rusty: batteries die; plugs don't spark; starters freeze up; tires dry rot.

I lost count of the times I had to have the Mazda towed from my house to the repair shop. Trying to crank it up after a week's respite, especially during the winter, was always an adventure. I would put the transmission in neutral, pull out the choke (in the last year, with a pair of pliers I kept in the car after I broke off the plastic cap), turn the ignition, pump the gas pedal, grit my teeth, and pray. The engine would cough, moan, whine, and sputter -- and turn over about fifty per cent of the time; the other fifty, it would flood, or wretchedly die out, leaving me cursing, resigned, and frustrated, wondering why I continued to submit myself to such punishment -- and expenditure.

Even when it started, the Mazda was snakebit.

My wife always knew when I had been driving the Mazda because I would waltz through the door trailing a telltale odor of burning oil, which was being consumed at such an insatiable rate that I always carried an extra quart or two. A full tank of gas was good for about 100 miles (figure that out). One particularly irritating problem was the unreliable motor that raised and lowered the side windows. Sometimes a helping hand would suffice, but too often I would ride home on a cold evening freezing to death because I had inadvertently lowered the window and wasn't strong enough to pull it back up.

Although manual shift cars aren't supposed to move when in gear, it's advisable to engage the emergency brake, a precaution my elder son David overlooked one evening after driving the car and leaving it parked on the hill in front of our house. A few minutes later, my wife watched helplessly from the kitchen window as the Mazda started to roll gently down the slope towards a neighbor's wooded front yard, rapidly gaining speed. Fortunately, it didn't have far to go before a wall of shrubbery abruptly ended its runaway career. Perhaps, in the long run, I would have been better off had it rushed headlong into a tree, and put us all out of our misery.

Its clutch would burn out at the most inopportune times. One morning I was calmly cruising through Madison Heights after dropping off my laundry when I was overwhelmed by a sudden, sinking feeling: the transmission was frozen in second or third gear, and I realized that, wherever I came to a stop, I was destined to remain. I guided my wounded baby down the Madison Heights hill and across the John Lynch Bridge, maintaining just enough momentum to roll up Fifth Street to Church, veer left at Sixth, coast downhill to Main, execute another left turn, and come to rest in a made-to-order parking space across from the Holiday Inn Select -- from which I could walk six blocks to my office and call for a tow truck.

The crowning blow was delivered not long after that when I was on my way to a morning workout at the YMCA and noticed a suspicious lack of pep emanating from the accelerator. Staggering up Bedford Avenue, I managed to maneuver the car over to the right hand curb just as the engine gave up the ghost, appropriately enough, alongside a cemetery. Was someone sending me a message? The logical course of action (or inaction) would have been to perform a secular burial ceremony and then abandon the body to the neighborhood vandals, who might have uncovered something of value in this shell on wheels. But, one more time, nostalgia trumped common sense, and I put it back in service.

The Mazda needed an owner who could restore its ancient nobility, and, by accident, I found one, a Schewel manager whose avocation was bringing antiques like this one back to life; in other words, he was a grease monkey. My ears perked up one day in his store when he asked me if I still had that old RX-7, and, in short order, we made a deal. To quote the famous bard, "Parting is such sweet sorrow," especially after twenty-six years, longer than either of my two marriages -- yet whenever my heart felt as empty as the vacant parking space in front of my house, I would console myself with the thought that the car was in the shop for another repair job, from which it just wouldn't be returning any time soon.

With the Mazda available (when it started) for brief exhibitions of youthful fantasies and idiosyncratic behavior -- there's something to be said for arriving at an event in the oldest car in the world -- I felt safe reverting to form: an economical, unobtrusive, banal mode of transportation; and thus in 1988, or thereabouts, embarked on a twenty-year relationship with Ford Tauruses -- cycling through four iterations.

Yes, I was one of the millions who helped make the old bull America's best-seller -- until an inept redesign and Ford's failure to capitalize on the brand enabled the Toyota Camry to charge past it. Actually, all four -- white, white, silver, and red -- turned out to be excellent cars: roomy, comfortable, smooth-riding, fuel efficient, and dependable -- up to 130,000 miles. And is it not conceivable that the front-wheel drive and improved handling of this new generation kept me accident free -- or was it simply due to a cautionary attitude borne of maturity?

I always maintained that I would never purchase a foreign-made car new, insisting that the American ones were just as good. But a year ago I found myself in a quandary.

The lease on that last Taurus had run out, and as I looked around at Ford's ungainly new version and at the crowded field of family sedans that ran the gamut from Ford Fusions and Chevrolet Malibus and Impalas to Buick Lucernes and Chrysler 300s (My wife drove one for two years, and she and I both hated it), I felt decidedly uninspired. When I finally considered stepping up to a luxury sports sedan, I surrendered to the market-dominating imports, silently acknowledging that they had long ago vanquished their Cadillac and Lincoln competitors. But even there, I thought the full-blown Lexus and BMW too expensive for my taste and the smaller Lexus and Infiniti too derivative of their Toyota and Nissan counterparts.

In the midst of this star search, mired in indecision, I read an article in the Wall Street Journal touting the amenities and value of the Hyundai Genesis, the Korean manufacturer's headfirst dive into the domestic luxury market, which the reporter described as comparable to the Lexus LS460 (if one could get past the car's tainted badge) for half the price; in other words, it was a poor man's Lexus.

I drove my four-year-old Taurus over to the local Hyundai dealer to engage in some serious car talk.

He had one in the showroom -- naturally silver. It was love at first sight, as I was charmed by the styling (particularly the Mercedes-like grill and the BMW-borrowed taillights), the size (roomier than a Cadillac CTS, Infiniti G35, or Lexus GS350), the interior, the features, and the sticker price -- $34,000, except the dealer had added a $2000 premium.

"Is there any discount," I humbly inquired. "No sir," said the sales manager. "Hyundai is importing a limited quantity of these vehicles, and they are already in great demand. If I bought one myself, that is what I would have to pay."

"Well, then," I said, "Can I take it for a test drive?" "Only if you make a deposit," was his cordial response. "This is a luxury automobile, and we do not want to put any unnecessary miles on it."

You also don't want to sell it, I thought to myself as I walked out.

I found another model at a dealership in Christiansburg. It was red -- a color I didn't like -- but it didn't matter. I wasn't permitted to test drive that one either, although I could buy it at the sticker price.

A few days later I wandered into a Hyundai showroom in Greensboro, N.C., where I met a salesman who acted like he wanted to sell a car -- maybe because he had four Genesis on his lot, including a silver one identical to the one I had admired back home.

"Can I drive it?" I asked him. "Sure," he said. "Hop right in. I'll get the key, and we can take it out on the highway." And when I asked him for his best price, and he came back with $34,000, $2000 off the sticker price, I bought it.

But only after I took a die-hard Lexus owner to check out the one in Lynchburg -- and the sales manager initiated a frantic telephone and e-mail campaign offering me progressively steeper price cuts when I told him I had gotten a discount from another dealer.

It's a fine car -- jumps off the block, handles superbly, gets 30 mpg on the highway, is so quiet I have walked away with the motor running, starts with the push of a button, and looks quite nice parked between a midnight blue Lexus and a black BMW.

Triple Play

After a two-and-a-half-hour drive, it's only fifty minutes by air from Richmond International Airport to LaGuardia and New York City, a place which, whether viewed from 10,000 feet or ground level, resembles Lynchburg, Virginia (my point of origination), about as much my lamentable and long-defunct golf swing resembles Tiger Woods's.

A bizarre but appropriate analogy, since golf was initially what this three-day junket was all about -- spectator golf, that is, as devoted readers of this blog will recall that I wisely abandoned the sport for the fifth and last time about twelve years ago. (The Last Nine Holes, August 27, 2007)

When I inquired of my friend, Chandler A., if he was planning to attend the local debut of Nickelodeon icon, Sponge Bob Square Pants, at the Schewel store on Timberlake Road on Saturday, June 20th -- since his company owned the license to manufacture furniture-related products bearing the image of the wildly popular cartoon character, including the child's recliners we sell in our stores -- a promotion which, by the way, drew 1200 frenzied fans -- he responded with a resounding, "Heck no, Marc. I'm going to the U.S. Open with a couple of buddies. And, for a good customer like you, we just might be able to scrounge up another ticket (or two, when I mentioned that I had a son living in New York)."

Myopic (in more ways than one) and provincial, I had shunned the Big Apple for too long -- even after my older son, David, moved there upon graduating from college and established a career for himself as a free-lance television film editor. Finally, five years ago, my wife persuaded me to accompany her and some friends to the U.S. Tennis Open, awakening me (along with a reading of Robert Caro's classic biography of Robert Moses: "The Power Broker") to the scintillating and diverse attractions of the city like no other: skyscrapers, stores, restaurants, outdoor cafes, delis, museums, parks, riverfronts, pedestrian congestion, subway maneuvers, roller-coaster taxicab rides, charming urban neighborhoods, myriad entertainment options, the curious conjunction of extreme poverty and great wealth, and, everywhere I turned, so many people, of every size, shape, demeanor, color, ethnicity, and sexual orientation, dressed up in designer tee's and jeans or down in cheaper iterations of the same attire, or in basic black, glued to their cell phones and blackberries, in the midst of which one never feels out of place, unless he's wearing the traditional button-down collar and blue blazer of a dyed-in-the-wool Southern gentleman.

Friday afternoon, from a window seat aboard my Canadair Regional Jet, I enjoy a panoramic view of the City's environs, as the plane soars across Manhattan's vertical sprawl, a veritable legoland that is as awe-inspiring in miniature as it is full-blown, and heads up the East River and out Long Island Sound -- where the elegant homes of the suburban rich stretch below amidst lush green foliage bordered by small inlets and dotted with shapely swimming pools -- before circling back over scruffy, middle-class Queens to land and taxi past the familiar letters stuck like an afterthought on a grassy knoll: "Welcome to New York City."

My son is dutifully waiting at curbside -- in the venerable 2000 silver Taurus I sold him (for a pittance) five years ago when it came off a Schewel lease -- to transport me to the clean, moderately-priced ($135 a night) hotel, the Chelsea Savoy, located about seven blocks from his residence -- thus sparing me the arduous task of navigating the intricate bus-subway connections between LaGuardia and Manhattan, or, even worse, the thrill of a New York City taxicab ride, courtesy of a driver of indeterminate nationality talking incessantly on his cellphone in an indecipherable language, inattentive to the flow of surrounding traffic.

David lives in a $400,000 500-square-foot co-op in the West Village. His building, artistically-named "The Vermeer," is typical New York, spanning almost half of Seventh Avenue, rising twenty stories to a rooftop patio ideal for small summertime parties or romantic tete-a-tetes, and guarded by a hefty doorman, who eyes every non-resident suspiciously upon his entrance and then dials upstairs to confirm that he is indeed no uninvited interloper.

The ground floor of this institution is occupied by the Westside Market, 30,000 square feet of narrow, twisting aisles stocked floor to the ceiling with every variety of canned, fresh, frozen, or packaged food imaginable, through which David and I wend our way to a deli bar at the rear of the store -- gliding past a hot buffet of enticing prepared foods -- where I order the best $6.00 tuna sandwhich I have had since my last visit.

Our evening activity takes us by subway -- where I sit beside a young woman engrossed in the newest Hebrew best-seller -- to a New York landmark, but a fresh discovery for me, the Lincoln Center: a six-building three-city-block complex housing, among others, the Juilliard School, the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts, the Metropolitan Opera, the New York City Ballet, and the New York Philharmonic -- a bona fide lifetime of culture for those of us from the hinterlands.

We arrive in the neighborhood early enough for dinner, and wander into a bustling Tex-Mex cafe called "Harry's Burritos," but ignore the signature dish and order a pair of uninspiring enchiladas. After this unsavory interlude, we stroll into Central Park and take a quick tour through the famous "Tavern on the Green," where in the open courtyard we stumble upon an all-black private party and a handful of energetic and overweight Baby Boomers "Doing the Hustle," before moving on to a small, shaded grandstand to watch a fiercely competitive game of coed corporate softball.

A few minutes before 8:00 PM, we rouse ourselves from the Park and make our way to our final destination, the Lincoln Center Theater at the Vivian Beaumont, to immerse ourselves in the three-hour revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "South Pacific."

While I am hardly a music aficionado nor a theater buff, a taste of Broadway a few years ago -- namely, "The Producers" -- ensnared me. Once exposed, who can not but delight in the stunning ambiance of those glorious, historic playhouses (of which the Vivian Beaumont is not one), the elaborate stagecraft, the interactive orchestra, the resonant voices, the perfected choreography, the vivid costumes, the perpetual energy, and the singular fact that he is witness to the finest actors, singers, dancers, and musicians in the world?

Since that epiphany, I have seen in recent years "Wicked," "The Putnam County Spelling Bee," "Jersey Boys," The Lion King," "Mama Mia," and "Rent." "Wicked" disappointed me; banished to the balcony, I could hardly hear the dialogue and the song lyrics. And my wife and I walked out of "Rent" at intermission because the plot was impenetrable and the songs forgettable. But, as for the rest, each was a marvel.

Having been stung by "Wicked," I now always try to purchase orchestra level seats close to the stage, and so, at 7:58 PM, David and I find ourselves two rows from the front but in the far right corner, a placement at first somewhat worrisome, until the thrust stage rolls back to reveal the thirty-piece orchestra, and we realize the style of the performance is virtually "theater in the round," assuring that we are never too from the action or the actors' nuanced facial expressions.

Critics have been unanimously effusive in their praise of this show, and I couldn't agree more with such encomiums as:

"It's been almost six decades since the opening of the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic and its first Broadway revival, but the Lincoln Center Theater production makes the waiting -- to echo the James Michener source excerpt splashed across the front scrim: 'The waiting, the waiting, the timeless, repetitive waiting' -- worthwhile. From the seductive swell of a full orchestra playing the glorious five-minute overture to the poignant final tableau of love and reconciliation, this is ravishing theater." (David Rooney, Variety, April 3, 2008)

"I know we're not supposed to find perfection in this imperfect world, but I'm darned if I can find one serious flaw in this production." (Ben Brantley, New York Times, April 4, 2008)

"Simply wonderful. Bartlett Sher's masterly reinvention of Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific opened at the Vivian Beaumont last night with enough wattage to keep Lincoln Center alight for years." (Clive Barnes, Newsday, April 4, 2008)

"In this new production, director Bartlett Sher and a gifted, great-looking cast fully engage both the challenges faced by the characters and the romantic sweep of Rodgers and Hammerstein's ravishing score." (Elysa Gardner, USA Today, April 3, 2008)

Romance, intrigue, humor, and an unexpected (to those like me unfamiliar with the story) outbreak of a dated but universal racial prejudice are interwoven into a plotline that flows effortlessly from the opening sequence, in which the love affair between the sober middle-aged plantation owner Emile de Becque and the cheerful Little Rock naval nurse, Nellie Forbush, germinates and blossoms in the South Pacific heat during World War II, only to wilt when Nellie, true to her "insular Arkansas upbringing," realizes that Emile's two children are the offspring of his former marriage to a Polynesian woman.

Similarly, "Philadelphia's Princeton-educated Joseph Cable falls for Bali Ha'i island girl Liat but despairs of introducing her to life back home. The four conflicted lovers play out their drama while Liat's money-hungry mother Bloody Mary and enlisted man Luther Billis try to grease various wheels and while the war in the Pacific intensifies, eventually involving de Becque and Cable in a dangerous mission as the women wait." (David Finkle, Theatermania, April 4, 2008)

But, as one amateur reviewer wrote, "You don't go to 'South Pacific' for the story, or for the set [which boasts, at times, 'a breathtaking Pacific panorama, a huge spinning flatbed truck, a flashy war room, and World War II fighter plane' (Joe Dziemaniowicz, Daily News, April 4, 2008)]. You go for the songs, the wonderful, joyful, romantic songs" -- songs which captivated audiences and non-theater-goers sixty years ago and shot up the record charts, songs which suddenly prick some ancient musical memory deeply repressed in the consciousness of this most obtuse of auditors. Yes, even I remember (now) "Some Enchanted Evening," "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair," Bloody Mary," "There is Nothing Like a Dame" -- perhaps because my parents played them on a turntable fifty years ago.

These songs meld seamlessly into the storyline as integral components and natural developments; "presented like musical conversation, they sound fresh and exciting," (Joe Dziemaniowicz, Daily News, April 4, 2008) and feel "as natural as breathing." (Ben Brantley, New York Times, April 4, 2008)

When Brazilian Opera baritone Paulo Szot, as Emile, erupts with "Some enchanted evening, You may see a stranger, You may see a stranger, Across the crowded room," the grandeur is palpable, sending chills up the spine. And yet, when he calmly delivers the peroration, "Once you have found her, never let her go," the result is "a measured and honest consideration of love." (Ben Brantley, New York Times, April 4,2008)

Soprano Laura Osnes substitutes admirably for Kelli O'Hara, the revival's original Nellie, bringing to the Mary Martin role an "all-American eagerness" shaded by "a troubled, apprehensive guardedness." (Ben Brantley, New York Times, April 4, 2008) When she shampoos that man right outa her hair with "high spirits" and "plenty of sass," we are close enough to see the pain wrought by conflicted emotions and, later, the possible loss of her beloved Emile.

The Hawaiian actress, Loretta Ables Sayre, makes her New York debut as the avaricious Polynesian peddler, Bloody Mary, and is a show stealer. Short, pudgy, quick-stepping across the stage in her truncated stride, she renders "Bali Ha'i" and "Happy Talk" as "systematic acts of seduction" (Ben Brantley, New York Times, April 4, 2008), gazing steadily into the eyes of Lieutenant Cable, beckoning him, like the mysterious island, to "Come away, Come away, Come to me, Because, any night, any day, Bali Ha'i, it may call you," or tempting him with "You've got to have a dream. If you don't have a dream, How you gonna have a dream come true?"

Sixty years later, one moral of the tale still rings true, as Lieutenant Cable dissects in song the roots of intolerance: "You've got to be taught to hate and fear . . . You've got to be taught to be afraid, Of people whose eyes are oddly made, And people whose skin is a different shade. You've got to be carefully taught."

Dare I say . . . it was "some enchanting evening?"

Ah, but only a prelude to the next big event of this busy weekend -- Saturday, Day Three of the U.S. Open at the Bethpage Black Golf Course, Farmingdale, New York. Or is it Day Two, since a torrential downpour has washed away Day One, Thursday, after only three hours play, not only disrupting the players and the broadcast schedule, but also inciting the wrath of 50,000 ticket holders, who were left without recourse or refund, until the USGA, "threatened by the state Attorney General and skewered by NYC tabloids and talk radio stations, reversed course, and offered them entry on Monday, or a 50% refund had play concluded Sunday." (Damon Mack, Sports Illustrated, June 29, 2009)

Whatever day it is, my son and I bravely board the Long Island Railroad at 8:00 AM for a one-hour train ride to Farmingdale and a short ten-minute bus transfer to the golf course -- except for the one hour it takes us to check David's banned cellphone (about which he has been forewarned) and stand like cattle led to slaughter in a slowly-moving-quadruple-switchback line waiting to board said bus. And with gray skies glowering overhead, we still don't know if we will see any golf.

Some would question why a confirmed non-golfer (two, actually, counting David) would want to spectate a golf tournament -- to which I would reply, first, that just because I can't hit the ball doesn't mean I don't stand in awe and admiration of those who can, and, secondly, how many millions attend football, baseball, and basketball games who have gracefully hung up their cleats and tennis shoes forever?

This was my third professional golf tournament, having stood in the vicinity of the eighteenth green at Pinehurst in 1999 and heard the shouts trumpeting Payne Stewart's triumphant final putt, and having miraculously secured a position in a treeline barely twenty feet from where Tiger Woods hit a ball into a pond fronting the perilous fifteenth hole on the first day of the Masters in 2007.

Unless one is content to plant oneself comfortably in a grandstand overlooking a green and an adjacent tee box, and scrutinize successive threesomes or twosomes as they approach, putt, and drive, watching a golf tournament can be a strenuous exercise. At Pinehurst in 1999, my younger son Matthew and I were fortunate to fall in behind a twosome of Jon Daly and some other long-forgotten player; following them for almost eighteen holes replicated the experience of playing ourselves and facilitated us walking the entire course.

At the Masters two years ago, my mother and I made the mistake of trying to chase down some of the top players, which resulted in long and tiring hikes back and forth between various holes, fighting the monstrous crowds, seeing fewer golf shots, and losing entirely the feel of famous Augusta National.

Thus, when David and I finally locate the first hole -- it isn't easy -- we latch onto an international journeyman threesome teeing off at 10:30: Michael Campbell of New Zealand, best known for winning the 2005 U.S. Open, his only PGA Tour victory; Rod Pampling of Australia, winner of two tour events (and $11,625,000) in his ten-year PGA career; and Floridian Boo Weekley, also a two-time winner, but a crowd favorite, renowned for such antics as riding his driver cowboy-style down the first fairway at the 2008 Ryder Cup, running to a lake and starting to fish during a rain delay in a tournament on the Nationwide Tour, and telling talk-show host Jim Rome in 2007 that the wind on holes 16, 17, and 18 at Harbourtown was so fierce "it made your butthole pucker up."

Apparently, Boo's always a good interview. "It was so wet," at Bethpage, he said to a reporter, "I saw frogs climbing up the clubhouse walls trying to get out." (Damon Mack, Sports Illustrated, June 29, 2009)

I suspect also that a good deal of this man's popularity can be attributed to his fans' ability to cheer for him by booing.

What we see that day that we won't see on television (no matter how often the announcers repeat it) is how far and how straight these guys hit the ball -- almost every time -- and how difficult this course really is (or appears to be to one who hasn't seen very many): fairways that don't start until 175 yards from the tee box, and when they do, have been narrowed twenty-five yards by a freshly-grown first cut rough; deep wiry grass and underbrush when the player misses that first cut; sand traps lining the fairways and surrounding almost every green; elevated greens and doglegs producing a multitude of blind shots; small greens with imposing pin placements; 500-yard par 4's and one 600-yard hole.

We follow Boo and his partners for five or six holes, accompanied by a chorus of boos, which reaches a crescendo when the object of their affection birdies the par 5 fourth. In the gray overcast, we find it hard to follow the flight of the ball. We post ourselves 300 yards from the tee box, listen for the crack of the driver, gaze skyward in anxious expectation and repeated frustration, and then hear a heavy thump, signaling that the ball has landed somewhere nearby. From there, we traipse ahead to the green.

Weeks of rain -- which continues today in intermittent showers -- and three days of heavy pedestrian traffic have transformed the dirt paths around the course into unavoidable, soggy pools of black slime. Fortunately, I chose to wear tennis shoes, which I can clean in the bathtub of my hotel room, and short pants; while my socks end up so caked with mud that one washing doesn't suffice, at least my trouser legs are spared.

Not only is Bethpage Black long -- 7426 yards -- it's strung out like a caterpillar. With the tenth tee at the far end, the course loops back only once, making it difficult for spectators to cross from hole to hole, which, against my better judgment, David insists we do around midday, in order to see Tiger Woods.

Tiger's threesome -- the best of the day, as it includes Masters champion Angel Cabrera and British Open titleholder Padraig Harrington -- started from the tenth tee about the same time we arrived at the golf course, so he is playing the thirteenth hole when we decide to track him down. Besides the ubiquitous mud and the interminable distances, there is, of course, the problem of the crowd, since one-half of our 50,000 companions have the same idea as we do. We finally manage to perch ourselves atop a small mound which gives us a sliver of a view of the thirteenth green, a vantage point from which we are able to see Tiger sink a ten-foot putt for a birdie -- only the second birdie we witness all day.

I finally convince David that further pursuit of Tiger is a waste of time and energy, and, after a couple of $10.00 sandwiches and $4.00 drinks, we go out in search of an unencumbered threesome to follow the rest of the afternoon.

A reward of attaching oneself to one group for a number of holes is that -- no matter how obscure or well-known the players might be -- almost subconsciously, for a brief hour or two, a peculiar bond is flash-forged between player and spectator, the latter's emotions rising or falling with every brilliant shot or missed putt, any of which may stimulate casual banter between the two or, more likely, just one-sided conversation. Such is the case when David and I fall in alongside the unfamiliar trio of Chris Kirk, Craig Bowden, and Bronson Burgoon for six closing holes.

Burgoon, a youthful amateur from Texas A&M, quickly becomes the darling of some raucous fellows who have consumed too many $6.00 beers -- as have thousands of others that day, some of whom will earn a sour notoriety by heckling Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, and prompt tournament watchdogs to shut down beer service thirty minutes early, after 110,000 cups have been served, compared to an equal number of water and soda combined.

"Go Aggie," they shout, spurring him on with every swing, to which he responds with a sheepish grin and a half-hearted wave. We are within club lengths as he bravely thrashes out of the deep woods on thirteen (but still makes bogey) on his way to a back nine 42, seven over par. One of his partners, Chris Kirk, fares no better, losing a ball -- much to our amazement -- in the thick six-inch sawgrass on sixteen, in spite of frantic searches by all three players, their caddies, and several negligent officials and ball boys.

By 4:00 PM we have had enough of battling the elements. The ride home goes a lot faster -- probably because we are entertained by an affable fellow -- whom we actually encountered on the golf course gleefully flashing his cell phone ("You've got to know how to sneak them in.") -- who manages to recount his entire life story and that of his father -- a thirty-seven-year New York City detective -- to two visiting couples from Florida in the forty-five minutes between Farmingdale and Manhattan.

Safely ensconced in his dry apartment, David and I watch the remaining two hours of the U.S. Open broadcast on his 50" plasma HD television, before a final downpour mercifully ends play. We dine that evening with some friends of his at a quiet neighborhood Italian restaurant, and enjoy a pleasant meal, until the waiter pulls a New York surprise, smugly rejecting my credit card and condescendingly informing me that this is a cash-only establishment.

One live sporting event a weekend is enough for my media-oriented son, and so, even though it's Father's day, I am destined to fly solo for the last leg of this three-day whirlwind tour -- interleague play between the Tampa Bay Rays and the New York Mets at the new Citi Field in Queens. After a ten-mile run along the Hudson River Parkway (only three avenues from my hotel) and a satisfying brunch at the Comfort Diner, I once again board the Long Island Railroad (the Port Washington branch) for a twenty-minute train ride to Mets-Willets Point.

As one who loves the sport and follows the teams, players, and statistics religiously from Opening Day to the crowning of a World Series champion -- actually, a day of mourning for me, as it marks the beginning of a five-month dry spell -- I never forgo the opportunity to see a Major League baseball game, no matter who's playing -- although I would certainly prefer to see my beloved -- and hapless (this year) -- Oakland Athletics. (If you wonder, "Why them?" just read Michael Lewis's "Moneyball.")

Thus, the anticipation steadily builds as I pass through the impressive portico and make my up -- one, two, three levels -- to find my $90 seat (which, I read later, could be had for half that, as the Mets were desperate to fill their new stadium). I am hoping for something better, but this is New York; actually, even from the third deck, I am close to the field and have a sweeping view of all but the far right corner, where, in the sixth inning, Met catcher Jeff Schneider hits a home run off the Pepsi sign. (So I am told by a fellow behind me.)

Citi Field boasts all the amenities fans have come to expect of the current generation of ball parks, which was spawned by Baltimore's Camden Yards, and now includes Washington's Nationals Park and Philadelphia's Citizens Bank Park: a proliferation of food stations every one hundred feet serving typical beefy cuisine and beer and soda at inflated prices; patio dining and drinking above the bleachers in center field, where the two men sitting next to me migrate around the seventh inning; a fabulous scoreboard, employing the ultimate in techno-wizardry, displaying every relevant statistic, updated instantaneously, and featuring the obligatory animated diversions; and, of course, the playing field, a geometrical jewel, the luxuriant green outfield a pastoral garden planted amidst concrete and steel, mowed in alternating strips clearly discernible from my elevated seat, the sandy infield manicured in stark contrast, all accented by chalked batter's box and foul lines.

As the nine defenders race to their assigned positions, one wonders how they can cover this broad expanse. (They can't, of course.)

Finally, after a stirring rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" -- to be followed in the seventh inning by "God Bless America" -- it's time to "Play Ball."

This is an interesting match-up. Both teams are hovering around the .500 mark, a severe underperformance for the Mets, whose $135,000,000 payroll ranks second only to that of their crosstown Bronx rivals, while the upstart Rays, competing against those other New Yorkers in the fierce American League East, have come back to earth after their meteoric rise to last year's World Series. In all fairness, the Mets have been decimated by injuries to two of their star infielders, first baseman Carlos Delgado and shortstop Jose Reyes, and to two starting pitchers and two frontline relievers.

In order to stay focused on the game and to have source material for this blog, I decide to keep score, which I haven't done since I taught myself the methodology watching Dizzy Dean and Pee Wee Reese broadcast the Saturday afternoon "Game of the Week" fifty years ago. On a scorecard, hits and outs are recorded using symbols to indicate the appropriate action and numbers to identify the fielder and the field position in play.

For example, referring to my scorecard, I see that, in the bottom of the sixth inning, with the Mets batting, Wright led off with a double to right field, and moved to third when Sheffield was thrown out, shortstop to first. Church walked, and then Schneider hit a home run to right field (the one I couldn't see), driving in Wright and Church. Valdez flied out to center field. Tatis, batting for the pitcher Stokes, struck out. The Mets scored three runs on two hits.

While to some baseball appears to be a slow-moving game with only occasional bursts of activity, therein lies its beauty. Turn away for an instant, and you miss the play -- which happens to me when Cora, leading off the bottom of the first, is suddenly walking back to the dugout, leaving me mystified and my scorecard displaying an embarrassing blank space, until, two innings later, the omniscient scoreboard comes to my rescue and informs me that Cora, in his first at-bat, fouled out to the catcher.

The game commences at 1:10 PM, and, with an expected duration of two-and-a-half hours, I am wondering how I am going to occupy myself during the five-hour interim before my scheduled LaGuardia departure at 8:30 PM -- a needless worry, as it turns out.

In the second inning, as the Rays (or is it the Mets?) are coming to bat, the field is mysteriously cleared, and remains so for about twenty minutes, to the increasing consternation of the fans. When play resumes, it is with three umpires instead of four, the home plate occupant having been stricken by some unspecified illness, which necessitates one of his comrades donning his protective equipment. A fellow in front of me offers as reasonable an explanation as any: "He ate a couple of Nathan's hot dogs."

By the time I get to the ballpark, the morning rain has stopped, and, as the game progresses, the cloud cover dissipates, unveiling a blue sky and a refreshing halo of bright sunshine. Around the sixth or seventh inning, however, the perverse weather pattern which has been afflicting the area for weeks blows in another shower, stopping play. This affords me the opportunity not only to lay aside my scorecard, locate a bathroom, and invest in a spicy Italian sausage (which looked too good to resist being eaten beside me), but also, upon my return to my sheltered seat, to observe the expertise of the field crew as, like soldiers in precise formation, they expeditiously unroll the protective tarp, and then repeat the process in reverse when the rain passes on an hour later.

The game itself is an extended affair. By the time the last out is made at 5:30, the Rays have scored ten runs on seventeen hits; the Mets, six runs on ten hits. A steady rotation of pitchers -- the Mets throw seven into the fray, the Rays only one fewer -- slows down the clock, as each mid-inning change involves two managerial trips to the mound, a long ride (or trot) in from the bullpen, and the requisite number of warm-up pitches. Each team uses three pinch-hitters, one of whom, for the Rays, oddly enough, is a pitcher, Sonnanstine, an American Leaguer who doesn't normally bat.

Needless to say, I see lots of action. The Mets twice take leads, 2-0 in the second and 5-4 in the sixth (after Schneider's home run), only to see the resourceful Rays storm back. In the seventh inning, the Rays play havoc with my scorecard, sending ten men to the plate, smashing two singles, two doubles, and a home run, scoring four runs, and taking an 8-5 lead they will not relinquish. The principal victim is rookie David Parnell, who is charged with all the damage, and fails to retire a single batter.

It's Father's Day -- and the scoreboard never lets any of the 25,000 in attendance (officially 39,000, but I never saw them) forget it, offering up sentimental trivia about each player's father as he comes to bat and broadcasting a mini-contest in which proud youngsters testify as to "Why My Dad is the Best."

Although none of my five children is with me -- two call during the afternoon -- I am not alone. The comraderie of a sporting event quickly envelops me like a cozy blanket, particularly here, at a baseball game, where the relaxed, leisurely pace is most conducive to one's striking up a conversation with a neighbor, initially about baseball -- the tribulations and successes of one's favorite team; individual batting averages, home runs, won-lost records; tall tales of ball games long past -- but soon drifting into personal revelations. For three fleeting hours on a Sunday afternoon, in the city of millions, a common interest in the greatest game makes friends out of total strangers.

There is no triple play on the field that day, yet as I sit on the Q48 bus to LaGuardia -- scorning a $25 limousine ride, I walk six blocks, hop on another bus, and transfer in Chinatown Flushing -- I reflect that I have experienced a three-day weekend just as rare: grand theater, the premier golf tournament in the world, and an ordinary, yet exciting, midseason Major League baseball game -- just three more reasons why New York City is a traveler's paradise, and Lynchburg, Virginia, by contrast, is a comforting place to come home to.