The House of Mouse

Back in December of 1991, I was living in downtown Dayton, just North of the Little Miami River that cuts through the city. It was a small area of homes just on the back end of Hugh White Honda on Linwood Street.

I was working for Cap Gemini America and had a small three room apartment in a house that was built in the late 1800s or early 1900s. The house had a lot of character. I had the upper left apartment. Hannah lived across the hall from me on what was the other half of the second floor. She was an older lady, in her mid 70s, who had a nephew that stopped in weekly to check up on her.

As the weather got colder and living by the river, I was shocked to learn that mice had found their way into the house to seek warmth. It made sense though, a really old house likely has all sorts of ways that mice can get in.

The two neighbors downstairs included a young couple who had an annoying dog and my friends Ivan and Ivana. I have to call them that because they get angry when I write stories about them with their given names of Chris and Cindy. Both sets of neighbors had cats, which meant, they were mouse free. That left myself and Hannah to handle MouseQuest 1991 on our own.

I bought some mousetraps at Meijers late that Saturday night and set the first on at 12:45 Sunday afternoon. I settled into the ugly gray chair to watch my Bengals and I remember what a sunny day it was.

Right at 1:00, I heard a snap in the kitchen and it was so loud and out of the norm, I lept out of the chair wondering, "What the Hell was that?" Then I remembered I set a trap!

I ran into the kitchen and saw the most incredible sight. A mouse with the torso the size of my fist - I am NOT kidding - was trying his damndest to drag the mouse trap that snapped across his body back under the stove. This was the toughest freaking mouse I have ever seen. This was a rodent of unusual size and determinization.

He got under there before I could stop him, but he soon succummbed to his life altering injuries. I got a wire coat hanger and was able to fish him out.

I set the second trap moments later, placed it in the kitchen floor and went back to watch my Bengals.

At 1:15, I heard another SNAP!

This one died immediately.

I set the third trap.

At 1:30, like clockwork, SNAP!!!!! One of them was a really creepy looking two toned fuzzy mouse and there was a pool of blood on the trap and floor.

I set the fourth trap.

At 2:00, I was 4 for 4.

The mice were gradually getting smaller and taking longer and longer between catches as I wrangled 6 of them by the end of the game. That was all I caught as I think they renamed my apartment to Mousedor.

One does not simply scurry into Mousedor.

I scared the Hell out of Ivana when she took the lid off the garbage can and saw a mouse in there Monday morning. I was told by her to dispose of them in a better method going forward.

Later that week, Ivan and I were talking with Hannah. She always seemed to be such a nice and gentle elderly lady.

A mouse had fallen into her tub that week and she didn't know what to do.

She then told us a story that horrified me to this day.

The mouse could not get out of the tub and she was not about to just pick it up, so she needed to kill it the only way she could think of. She boiled a pot of water and killed it by pouring the boiling water and bleach on the mouse.

I learned that day from Hannah that a mouse is capable of screaming.

I always wondered if Hannah was a Nazi interogater in hiding after that day.

The mice did not ever come back into the house with the cats down stairs, the experienced mouse hunter in the top left and the Nazi torturer in the top right.

Word was out in the mouse community and they stayed clear of the House of Horrors.

Cheeseburgers with Jackson Browne

I have a friend named Chris Wettle with whom I've probably seen about 60 concerts since high school.  I got a call one afternoon in 1989 or 1990 from him while I was interning at NCR in Dayton.

"Hey Bryon.  Want to go to a concert tonight?"

I thought for a moment and responded, "The Jimmy Buffett concert in Cincinnati?"

"No," he replied, "The Jackson Browne concert in Columbus."

Two hours later we were driving East on I-70 to Columbus in his piece of shit Mercury Bobcat, without a map to guide us, on our quest to find the Ohio Theater.

It took us a while, but we found it eventually.  We had never been to Columbus before and I had never seen a theater like Ohio theater.  It was beautiful.  Years later, I would see Mary-Chapin Carpenter perform there and it has wonderful acoustics.

We walked into the auditorium and looked around to see if anyone was trying to sell tickets.  After a few minutes of seeing the crowd and no one selling any, we walked up to this ticket window.  I asked what tickets they had left and he showed me a map of the auditorium.

Chris tapped me on the shoulder.

"This guy has tickets."

I excused myself from the gentleman at the window and we stepped over to talk with the guy.

"You need tickets?" he asked.

"Yes, two," we answered.

"I have two.  You want them?"

"Sure," one of us answered.

"How much?"

"No charge."

"Nah, let us pay you something for them."

"No.  No charge.  I was waiting for these girls I met in Cincinnati last night, but they are not here and I have to go in."

He then put them in our hands and we thanked him.

After he walked away, a gentleman walked up and asked, "Do you know who that was?"

We answered, "No."

"He's in the opening band."

His name was Jorge.  He had played on Jackson's 1986 album "Lives in the Balance."  I am not sure to this day if it was Jorge Calderon or Jorge Strunz as I read the liner notes of the album on Wikipedia today.

I walked to the bathroom while the lady seated Chris.  When I came out Chris came walking back shaking his head.  "Oh my God," was all he could say.  She walked me down the aisle and we got closer and closer to the stage.  We stopped at the ninth row and we were dead center.

The show was amazing.  We watched the opening band Sangre Machehual and we were mesmerized by their guitar play.  Jackson also came out and played "Lawless Avenues" with them.

After Jackson blew us away with his acoustic show, this was the "World in Motion" tour, the lights came up and we saw Jorge.  We walked up to the stage and thanked him over and over again for the tickets and told him how awesome his band was.

Jorge offered us tickets and back stage passes for the show the next night in Indy, but we knew we could not make it.  We decided to take the time after the show and wait by the tour bus with only about a dozen people.  Jackson came out of the theater and seemed kind of blown away people were standing there hoping to greet him.  We basically all shook his hand, told him we loved the show and then Chris and I were on the road back to Dayton.

The next day, I am walking across campus and I bump into Mike Ferrari.  He stopped me and said, "I heard about last night; that was so cool!"

"Yeah it was," I replied.

"Can't believe you went to a bar and had beers with Jackson Browne!"

I was struck speechless.  That didn't happen, but Mike had walked off before could say anything.

Later that day I ran into Ted, Mike's house mate.

"Dude, heard about last night.  Holy shit that is unbelievable!  I can't believe you had cheeseburgers with Jackson Browne!"

"What?"

"Jeff told me about you and Chris going out after the show because Jackson invited the two of you to have cheeseburgers with him."

I called Chris when I got home.

"So did you tell Jeff about our trip to the show?"

"Yeah."

"Did you tell him he had cheeseburgers with Jackson Browne?"

"What?"

"Ted walked up and was in disbelief and told me he could not believe we had cheeseburgers with Jackson Browne."

Chris just laughed.  He called me later and told me Jeff wanted to make the story more exciting each time he told it, so he embellished it each time.  We all had a laugh about it.  It was actually quite funny.

Last I heard, Chris and I were supposed to join Jackson Browne on tour for the next leg, but that never materialized.

A Geeky Guide to a Practical Joke

Some history

"Star Trek" and the all the spin offs can be a very polarizing subject. People either seem to love it or hate it. I admit the cheesy special effect and overacting by William Shatner from the first series can be a turn off.

I began watching "Star Trek: The Next Generation" in college during it's third season. During season three through season five, it was probably some of the best written television despite being in the science fiction genre. It was not long before a group of us would plan the evening around it and watch it.

The next year, Rob, Chris, Jeff and Matt moved into a house that sat behind the Frisch's located at the corner of Brown and Stewart on the edge of the University of Dayton. I would walk down there and watch it with the guys every week. (Sadly, the house has long since been demolished.)

During the fourth season, the franchise announced there was going to be a new series called "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine."

The Episode

There is an episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" called "Cause and Effect." The Enterprise enters a time loop where they keep repeating events over and over similar to "Groundhog Day" which I believe actually came out two years later. The episode actually opens with the 45 second teaser showing the destruction of the Enterprise. It was thoroughly confusing to the viewer until it came back from commercial and you see the ship floating along only to be destroyed 12 minutes later in the same manner. Then it came back from commercial and repeated itself.



The Joke

One of the guys, Cort, had a class, so the guys were always taping it so he could come home and watch it after us. Either Chris or Matt told him the tape was sitting in the VCR, but then the following conversation took place.

Matt: "Did you know this was the last episode of the series?"

Cort: "Really?"

Matt: "Yeah. They have the new series, Deep Space Nine, coming out next year, so they are canceling it and tonight is the last episode of the series."

Cort: "Wow, I'm glad you taped it."

He turned on the TV and saw the opening.

Cort: "What the..."

Matt: "Oh my God! I forgot to rewind it!"

Cort went berserk thinking he saw the end of the episode and the guys could not stop laughing because he got more and more pissed the more everyone laughed!

And as much of a highlight that was, they also got to retell the story over and over to everyone who watched it elsewhere that night.

It was a great joke actually to play on a Star Trek fan.