“Nikie’s for Mikie!” grumbled the old man as we tooled down 72 from Traverse City to Roscommon in the dim of twilight in our 1976 Dodge Comet. I sat in the back gripping a shoebox on my lap. It was orange. The color was an odd orange, really … it defied description. It was the kind of orange that was a cross between red and some mistake that they made at the shoebox factory. The box had one distinguishing feature: a white swoosh that ran across the side from one end to the other. I had noticed this swoosh on the cleats of some of my favorite major leaguers. I read about this new shoe and how great it was; how the Nike shoe would “improve performance”. Sold!
“I can’t believe I just spent TWENTY DOLLARS for ‘dem shoes, boy. There was a perfectly good pair of shoes at Penny’s that were ten, but nooooo Mikie’s gotta’ have his Nikie’s.” It was an endless rant from the man who couldn’t understand why anyone would spend more than five dollars on something that didn’t have some sort of carbureted engine as its power source. Then, the mockery began: “You’re a bank, dad,” he chirped in a pretty good imitation of the pubescent sounds that came from my mouth: “you grow money out back behind the house and let the deer feed off it, dad. You can afford it.”
Of course, my brother was next to me chortling as if this was Saturday morning cartoons. Every ten minutes my mother punctuated the diatribe with feeble attempts to help me: “Bill, it’s what he wants to do and this is how we support him. I’ll just work some extra hours at the bank.” Mom meant well with her dutiful comments but she did not realize that next to her, behind the wheel of that used car that he bought from his friend at the “Markey Auto” salvage yard, was a seasoned, well-oiled, professional miser: “you hear ‘dat boy? Your ma works her fingers to the bone so ‘dat you can run around in ‘dem Nikie’s.” Thus, I owned my first real pair of running shoes, purchased for my first 5k: the 1981 Kalkaska Trout Festival “Fun Run.”
Dad’s comments were sardonic indeed but they were borne of a lack of understanding. You see, I was chubby. I was a chubby kid and at 13, I was starting to really like two things that were very incompatible with my girth: sports and girls. In 7th grade our math teacher was a man named Ron McGinty. He was pretty bookish but he was also the varsity basketball coach. So, he had instant cred with me. Mr. McGinty was also a runner. I asked him why he liked running one day and his answer was simple: “it’s a great sport.” My interest piqued and I began trotting off during a few evenings here and there in the fall of 1980. It became my passion. From time to time, I would return home from a run to find dad in the garage, whereupon the exchange went something like this: Father: “where’d you go?” Son: “I did five. I looped over and up Pioneer Hill, back down and then over to the lake and back.” Father [with eyes narrowed to a perfectly dramatic, contemptuous squint]: “boy, I have no idea why you run around like that. Now, why don’t you clean up and help me change the ooolllll in the truck?”
I learned not to take it too seriously because Dad was always there. He was there at football games, basketball games, baseball games and yes, he was at the finish line at the trout festival run. Dad just could not grasp the running thing, though. It seemed so pointless to him; even more pointless than the hours my brother and I would spend shooting that silly orange ball at that makeshift backboard and net on the garage. The old man believed that you worked hard to learn a trade to feed your family. Your spare time was for things like cuttin’ wood, workin’ on your VEE-he-cel or maybe, fishin’. Sports were a waste of time: “you ain’t gonna’ be a pro, boy, so why you gotta’ turn ‘dis house like a gym hawl.” That was another thing about the man: he was from West Virginia but grew up in Detroit. He liked to lapse into his hillbilly persona for effect but he was quite articulate and a wordsmith. My theory is that he employed the ‘billy-speak because he thought it made him sound tougher around his “boys”. It didn’t.
Running has given me pleasure and helped me get through the daily grind of working my way through college [as you may have guessed my family did not have the bank to send me], working at channel 10 and the Michigan Radio Network while going to Cooley at night and of course, the bar exam. Running has helped me release stress and endure all the static that most of us who practice law experience daily.
I am now training for the Chicago Marathon. This is where you come in. No, no, no I am not asking you to run it with me. Keep reading. I am on a team that raises funds to fight cancer: “Immerman’s Angels.” I am also running in this marathon to raise awareness for the Son Rise Program. The Son Rise Program helps parents of autistic children. You see, my brother, Tom, that nattering little twerp next to me in the car, and his wife are the parents of Josh. Josh is autistic. He is an amazing 8-year-old boy. Tom and Sarah went through the Son Rise Program and the training that they received helped them help that precious little guy. You have no idea what life is like for their family unless you have an autistic child or know someone who does. I don’t think that there is one day that passes by that can be characterized as easy or without significant challenge.
You can go on-line at www.walkaroundtheworld.org for the Son Rise Program and www.firstgiving.com/mikenichols for Immerman Angels to make donations. Look at it like this: $10.00 for every mile I run is $260.00 (forget about the .2) and with inflation, that is less money than my first pair of Nike’s. Donate $5.00 to each program and you will give those miles that I run a meaning that my old man can truly understand: money.
Dad died last year. He collapsed last summer from internal bleeding brought on by twenty years of acute alcoholism. He spent six weeks in the St. Joseph Mercy ICU in Ann Arbor before Tom and I told the doctors to finally let him go. You see, Mom and dad divorced when I was about 20. Dad didn’t have a coping mechanism except for alcohol. He went on a 20-year bender and didn’t stop until a scare led him to a doctor, who told him that another drink would kill him. He went on a medication to help him stop. It was too late. That’s another reason why I’m running this marathon: it is my coping mechanism. Each stride puts distance between me and those emotions with which I was wrought during my darkest hours, many of which I experienced at his bedside.
I always wanted to finish a marathon. “If someone else can do it, why can’t I” I thought. Yet, I was always afraid of the distance: 26.2 miles. It is intimidating. It scares me. Dad will not be there at the finish line like he was at the trout run. He will be with me though, as I hear that unmistakable bark throughout the miles: “Nikie’s for Mikie.”