American Unsurety

He stood with his neck craned upward at the skyscraper falling right in his general direction. The ground cracked, but the asphalt separating was poppycock compared to the threat of more than one hundred tons of the American Surety Building plummeting toward his head. The windows already began to shatter. People screamed in fear and raised their hands, as if that would save them. Why hadn’t it hit the ground yet? Surely he should be dead by now. It seemed to be falling in slow motion. A balding middle-aged man in a three-piece suit steadily walked up to him. No words were exchanged as the man pulled a syringe from his coat and injected an unknown clear liquid into him and walked away. The building continued to fall, inches away from impact at 100 Broadway.
Harrison opened his eyes wide. His dreams were becoming realistic and getting closer to home. He passed the newly built American Surety Building on his way to work near City Hall Park. He was a cigar maker, selling his wares daily. It was a trade he had learned from his father, who had passed away two years ago, leaving him orphaned at age sixteen. He always stopped and stared in amazement at the beauty of the building. To envision the building collapsing right on top of him was a nightmare not to be forgotten. The man injecting him had only made things more disturbing.
He took in his surroundings. The intricacies of his dream slowly faded away but the three hundred and twenty-five square feet of the apartment were all too real. His bedroll on the floor provided little comfort, but he never mentioned it. The Westbrook family lay strewn about the tiny abode. Catherina and William had given birth to three children: Elizabeth, Joseph and Alexander. Harrison was not completely sure of their ages, but he was confident they were all between ten and thirteen, with Alexander certainly the youngest. William was a very frequent buyer of Harrison’s cigars and extended an invitation for him to live with his family in their meager space when he noticed Harrison sleeping in the park where he sold his cigars. The parents lay in the only bed in the apartment with little Alexander lying in between them. Elizabeth and Joseph were still asleep in similar bedrolls next to Harrison.
“Good morning Harrison” William yawned
“Morning William. Thank you again for opening your doors to me. I feel terrible for occupying the space,” Harrison genuinely announced. He had only moved in a few days ago.
“Think nothing of it. I know it’s not much and I’m sure the grass in the park is more forgiving than the floor in here, but we’re glad to have you.”
“Yeah Harry! We’re glad to have you!” Alexander declared from the bedpost, mimicking his father. The boy had certainly taken a liking to Harrison, and Harrison felt the same. He had a soft spot for the kids, and the feeling was mutual. Over the past few days of settling into the tenement, outsiders would think an uncle was moving in the way the children took to Harrison so quickly. It made his move-in seem less like an invasion and more like a homecoming. Still, he felt like he was intruding.
“What would you all like for breakfast?” Catherina asked everyone. Harrison would not answer, but simply agree with the consensus.
“Ham! Buckwheat Cakes! Coffee!” The children all requested
“You all know we have none of that. What we do have is toasted wheat, fruit and potatoes, which you all shall receive. Now make your beds and come help me prepare breakfast for everyone,” Catherina instructed the children. She was a good mother who loved her children. They were living their dream in meager conditions and never complained. They had allowed Harrison to experience this dream with them, to which he was forever grateful.
“Father, it’s still so hot! I could hardly sleep sound,” Elizabeth complained. The other boys said nothing, but thought the same thing.
“I know dear. But there is nothing we can do but wait it out. The heat cannot last forever. We can occupy the roof again today. The air up there seems just a bit cooler,” William replied.
“It’s been deathly hot at work as well. It seems there’s not enough water to drink to cool myself throughout the day as well,” William whispered to Harrison as the children began playing leapfrog on the other side of the room. William brought home money by helping construct a new bridge that would connect the Lower East Side to the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn. The job was convenient to William because he could easily walk the six blocks from their Cherry Street home to the construction site. Working near the water was a bit of a relief, but with the heat wave climaxing and not letting up anytime soon, the whole city was hell on Earth.
New York was experiencing one of its hottest summers in history. Living in a tenement apartment during ninety-degree days with the humidity reaching damn near one hundred percent was enough to make a man want to take his own life, not to mention sharing the apartment with a family of five. A couple of people had died from the heat in the building. He had seen the people from the morgue taking the bodies, covered in cloth. Harrison and William talked of it, and decided to keep quiet so as not to strike fear into the children.
Harrison had resorted to rolling cigars in his underwear on the roof. All of his neighbors had the same idea as they sat trying to cool off any way they possibly could. The fire escape was also covered with people, one per stair. Indecencies were thrown to the wind as everyone understood keeping cool meant staying alive. The children ran around playing on the roof in their bathing suits. Someone had brought up buckets full of water, which Joseph and Alexander were using to splash each other.
He wondered if the heat was the reason for his demented dreams. He could not remember all the details of his previous nights dream, but he could recall something about central park being a complete desert with no inhabitants except for him. If any dreams had any relations to the scorching heat, this one was the one.
After an hour of rolling cigars on the rooftop, Harrison could bear no more. He remembered there was a New York Giants game today. His favorite pitcher was playing, Mike Sullivan. While Sullivan didn’t have the arm that Jouett Meekin did, or the amount of wins, he had a certain swagger that made him a fan favorite. He had only enough money for himself to attend the game, so he quietly exited the roof. The children were having so much fun they did not even notice his sneakiness. He would have loved to take the children with him but he realized the time. Harrison ran to retrieve his bicycle, knowing he only had an hour to make it the thirteen miles from the tenement to the Polo Grounds for the game. If the children were to accompany him, he may run the risk of not making the game at all.
Sitting in the stands he cheered for strikes and booed the opposing team. He thought maybe if he biked the distance to the ballpark it would be cooler. The heat had not let up. Sweat dripped down his face. His mind began to wander. The field began to sink into the Earth. The players on the field fell to the ground. Mike Sullivan, despite his strength, could not keep his footing. Children and adults alike screamed in terror.
Harrison opened his eyes. Bodies littered the field and the stands alike. There were two others who had seemed to have just awoken from a similar dream-like state, a female with blonde hair wearing a sundress and one of the baseball players lying on the field. The female started screaming hysterically. Harrison and the baseball player eyed each other for a while, not knowing what to say or do considering the scene surrounding them. They both got to their feet to calm the woman down.
“What happened!?! Are they all dead!?! They’re dead!?!” The woman shrieked.
“Ma’am, calm down,” Harrison said calmly. He wanted to add more words of assurance but looking around, he had trouble finding those words. There must have been at least three hundred dead bodies littered across the field and surrounding area. The baseball player had yet to find any vocal communication to contribute. He stood shaking his head with his mouth agape. Harrison realized he had to try to calm both of these two down.
“Hey man, pull yourself together. We’ve got to figure out what to do here,” Harrison said to the ball player. As the words came out, Harrison himself discerned he was not fully sure of what to do from here either.
The ball player shook his head like a dog shaking off wetness. He blinked his eyes wide.
“It felt like an earthquake. But what the hell kind of earthquake just kills people that are just standing around?” he thought to himself out loud.
“I’m not sure. We survived though, that has to count for something. We should move. See if this is the only area that was impacted. We need the police or an ambulance or something. All I know is I don’t want to stay here right now and I’m willing to bet one of you will agree with me,” Harrison stated, eying the woman, hoping she would agree.
“We’re gonna need more than a few ambulances. There’s gotta be a couple a hundred bodies out here!” The ball player yelled. He turned around and Harrison read the name on the back of his jersey. Fuller. Harrison had a moment of sadness as he became aware of the fact that Mike Sullivan would never again throw a pitch.
The woman began to calm down as the setting surrounding them became less of a dream and more a reality.
“He’s right. Please, let’s go. I can’t stand the sight of them. Oh my God this doesn’t feel real,” She had come to her senses, but stood transfixed looking at the horde of dead littering the field.
“Let’s move then. I figure we should just head south into the city. Central Park is almost a straight shot once we hit Eighth Avenue,” Harrison announced. He had unofficially become the leader of the group, a role he didn’t necessarily want but readily accepted. Fuller hadn’t contributed much and the woman was right, he had no desire to remain at this newfound graveyard either.
The three of them set off at a hare’s pace. It seemed they could not leave fast enough. Once they were out of sight, they were startled to discover more bodies strewn about the sidewalks.
“What the hell happened around here?” Fuller asked, not necessarily looking for an answer. The whole city appeared dead. The sun was still out but as they got closer and closer to central park, they noticed not a single bird chirping, not a single child laughing, not a single person complaining of the heat which was still relentless.
“What do we do now? Why us?” The woman asked. Harrison remembered that she had not revealed her name but thought to respond to her questions first.
“I’ve been having these dreams since the heat has started. I had one during the ballgame, I guess I dozed off. Then I woke up and everyone was dead. Except for you two. What is your name by the way?”
“Ruth. Sorry we had to meet in the fashion we did. Your name?”
“Harrison. Fuller, I gathered your name from your jersey. Do you go by Fuller?”
“Sure. First name’s Shorty. You can call me either, and that’s crazy about your dreams. My dreams have been pretty odd lately too. Just last night I had a dream the new American Surety Building came crashing down on me. Before it could fall right on top of me I woke up,” Fuller revealed.
Harrison stopped dead in his tracks. So did Ruth.
“Did you say the American Surety Building? You’re not mistaken are you?” Harrison asked, hoping for a mistake.
“Hell no I’m not mistaken. It’s the tallest building in New York. It was falling in slow motion too. Like it would never land.” Fuller was wrong. It was not, indeed the tallest building. That title belonged to the Manhattan Life Insurance Building. But the Surety Building was a very close second.
“I had the same dream. Tell me, in your dream did a man inject you with something before the building fell?”
As the words came out of Harrison’s mouth, Fuller was now let in on the mystery. He understood why the two of them had stopped and looked at him mysteriously.
“We’ve all been having the same dreams. How?” Ruth asked. Harrison was starting to be annoyed with her questions none of them obviously had the answer to.
“I think we should head to the Surety Building. It has to have some answer for us. Let’s see… From here in Central Park that’s at least a two-hour walk. We don’t have much daylight left. I’d like to not be outside with these dead bodies lying all over the city,” Harrison articulated.
Halfway to the Surety Building, Ruth became quite fatigued and sat down on a bench.
“I must sit down. We have been walking through half the city. We have seen more of the expired than I would have thought to see in three lifetimes. I need water, something to cool down from this dreadful heat.”
Harrison noticed a house with its door open across the street. He had never been one to break any laws, but under the circumstances, it seemed laws suddenly were a thing of the past.
“There’s got to be something to drink in there.”
“Just go into someone’s house? That feels wrong,” Ruth winced.
“Hell, I’ll do it. I’m thirsty too,” Fuller crossed the road and entered the house.
Minutes passed in silence as both Harrison and Ruth sat on the bench contemplating the day’s events. Their dreams played in their heads like a boy playing stickball. Over and over the building fell toward them. Fuller emerged with two buckets of water and a loaf of French bread underneath one arm.
“Here you go. Anyone else starving? I haven’t eaten since before the game.”
“How can you eat at a time like this?” Ruth asked disgusted.
“Watch me.”
Fuller wolfed down half the loaf before offering Harrison a piece. Harrison hesitated, then reached out and ripped off a morsel. After all were satisfied, they rose from the bench. Ruth tripped on a body lying on the sidewalk and shrieked.
When they finally arrived at the American Surety Building, they all stared up at the twenty-two stories of architectural beauty. The building seemed to stare back at them, a great monolith of the city. They had traversed nine miles and seen more dead bodies than a mortician during the Civil War.
“What now?” Fuller wondered.
Before the words exited his mouth, the front door flew open. A balding middle-aged man in a three-piece suit stood in the doorway. As he open the doors, the building began to lean in their direction. The ground cracked. The building was falling right in their direction. The balding man strode towards them.
“You’re not injecting me! Don’t come near me!” Fuller screamed. Ruth thought the same thing but seemed to be in shock
“Who are you?” Harrison needed to know. If what was happening was real, he needed to know, for his own sanity.
“There’s no time for that. If you three do not take what I am about to give you, we are all dead and this world shall cease to exist.”
“Are you crazy? I took your injection in my dream and look where we are now! Thousands are already dead!” Fuller had had enough and began to run. The building was again falling in slow motion. The others stood transfixed and waiting.
“Fuller! Come back! We have to stay together!” Harrison screamed. He had looked to Fuller for strength and now he was gone.
“Quick, we haven’t much time. Please, let me help you.” The man requested
“Please help us,” Ruth pleaded and rolled up her sleeve.
The man injected her. Harrison watched it happen and went along, rolling up the sleeve to his white t-shirt. The man injected him as well. The building continued to fall, inches away from impact at 100 Broadway.
Harrison jolted awake in his bedroll and looked down at the vein in his right arm. There was a tiny spot with a droplet of blood dripping down his arm. William came in from the roof and saw Harrison lying awake.
“Good morning Harrison. It’s nearly noon, you’ve been sleeping for close to twelve hours! You’re not gonna believe this. You know that baseball player Shorty Fuller, plays for the Giants? He was found dead in his apartment last night. The police are saying he was flattened like a pancake, but there are no signs of a homicide. He was just laying in his bed. Craziest thing.”
Harrison looked down at his arm again. The spot remained. The heat wave raged on.

10/9/2011- Washington Capitals Game 1

Ahh the Capitals. The most reliable team in the D.C. area to deliver wins. As the Capitals raised their 5th consecutive Southeast Division Banner, the pressure to win the Stanley Cup once again loomed. This year, like the past 4 promises to see the Caps atop the Southeastern Division and one of the top teams of the Eastern Conference. And with a scoreless 1st period last night, it seems as though Coach Boudreau's defense first scheme is picking up right where it left off last season, but that may not be the best approach. The unstoppable offense of two years ago, which equaled the Capitals winning the Presidents Cup, came up short in the 1st round of the playoffs. Last year the defense stepped it up only to disappoint in the 2nd round to a division rival. Maybe this will be the year where the Capitals and Boudreau can find a recipe for success. We have sadly seen that it cannot be an offense or defense first team. If the Capitals can find a way to evenly distribute both, this may be their year

Alex Ovechkin showed great leadership last year sacrificing his tremendous goal scoring ability for defensive production. Last night was no preview of how his season will be. He spent most of the week in Russia following a death in the family.

Also, the Caps HAVE to try to finish games without them going to overtime. Let's not forget Playoff game 2 of the series against Tampa Bay last year where a goal was scored on an extremely lazy shift change. The Caps get tired after long games. Everyone does. But the difference is, the Caps get careless. Because of this, I will always be a nervous fan when a game goes into extra time.

Capitals 2011-2012 season is under way. Although it wasn't the most beautiful win in game 1, it's still a W

Cooley and the Average Redskin/NFL age

Chris Cooley. Someone that Washington fans have grown to trust over the years considering the amount of arrivals and departures from the team. But in recent weeks, Chris Cooley has received a lot of negative feedback for his inability to perform in games, with only 7 receptions for less than 70 yards on the season thus far. Fans may not know but he reported to Coach Shanahan that Fred Davis should receive (no pun intended) most of the looks for Tight End. Since then, Davis has been leading the team in receiving yards through Week 4. But let's look at it from a different perspective.

Chris Cooley is now 29. It is common knowledge that, since arriving in D.C., Coach Shanahan is trying to get the team younger. In one year Shanahan reduced the average age of the Redskins from 27.8 (the "oldest" team in the NFL) to 27.08. The average NFL age is 27.2. From a numbers perspective it does not seem like much. Now that we know this, Chris Cooley is an extremely seasoned veteran. Fans must now accept that Cooley's prime is behind him and the Fred Davis at TE era has begun. It seems a sad revelation to think that the most reliable Redskin over the past few years may be in a steady decline, I am happy to know that he has the grace to hand the torch to Fred Davis.

The State of Football

Recently i watched NFL Network's "100 Greatest Football Players of All Time" program. I found the show very entertaining and informative, but i think what I appreciated most was their extensive coverage of players that came before the modern era. The difference between the players today and the players of yesteryear are their passion for the game, something that seems to be lacking today. Players like Chuck Bednarik and Sammy Baugh, players who came way before my time but played multiple positions during their time in the league. These days, because of high dollar contracts and player safety, you never see things such as the teams Quarterback doubling as the teams punter AND defensive back. But that's what you got with Sammy Baugh (a Redskin I might add), a mighty force on both sides of the ball. How often do you hear of a player leading the league in passing, punting, and interceptions all in the same season? It's this kind of athlete i wish was around today. Instead, fans are forced to deal with a lockout while players and owners argue over money issues. Sammy Baugh signed a contract for $8,000 his first year with the Redskins. This made him the highest paid player on the team. Today, we have Albert Haynesworth signing a contract for $100,000,000 while he paces up the sidelines for most plays playing maybe 1 or 2 downs while the Skins are on defense. Baugh must have been rolling in his grave.
The closest player we have today to such a God of the Football field is Owen Marecic of Stanford. Owen plays both Fullback and Linebacker for the school. Just recently he was drafted by the Cleveland Browns with the 124th overall pick. It's players like Owen that teams should be vying for, instead of high profile, overconfident players such as Cam Newton and Nick Fairley. When I see Cam Newton I see a big resemblance to Jamarcus Russell. A lot of glitz and glamor, but that does not always equal success in the NFL. (i.e., the comparison to Russell). Marecic seems like a player who could be put on a field his rookie year and have instant success. He may not score a touchdown on offense and then 13 seconds later score one on defense (which he did in college) but his knowledge of both sides of the football will help him in droves. Hell, Stanford runs a pro style offense anyway, so it shouldn't be too hard or take too long before he records his first sack or scores his first touchdown. Old school football, filled with passion and "True Grit", may have died a long time ago, but there are still some solid players out there who care more about the game then the paycheck.