Craig Lancaster - 600 Hours of Edward

Tom Landry must have been a very good man.

In 1978, when I was nine years old, my father took me with him to Dallas on a business trip. I mostly stayed with Grandpa Sid and Grandma Mabel while Father did his business. He worked for an oil exploration company then, and he was in charge of its Montana and North Dakota operations, which is why we lived in Billings. He didn’t become a politician until a few years later, after the oil business “went in the crapper,” as my father likes to say. By then, he had made a lot of money and didn’t need to be in the oil business anymore. He was a Billings city councilman for a while and then mayor of Billings and then Yellowstone County commissioner.

But back in 1978, when he took me to Dallas with him, he was still in the oil business. One day, when he didn’t have meetings, we went to Irving, where the Dallas Cowboys work out. I got to meet Tom Landry and Dan Reeves, who was an assistant coach with the Cowboys at the time and later went on to be a head coach in places like Denver and New York and Atlanta. I also got to meet Roger Staubach, who was the Cowboys’ quarterback and my favorite player. I also met lots of other players, and they all signed my autograph book. I still have it.

It was a great day. I felt very close to my father then.

Before the Cowboys start playing, I haul the stuff from Home Depot downstairs to the basement and organize it in the order that I will need it later. I can’t start The Big Project just yet. There’s not enough time before the game, and I have to prepare. For one thing, I have to grab the newspaper off the stoop and record my weather data so it is complete.

At 2:16 p.m., I am sitting on my couch, facing the TV, agape. (I would say I like the word “agape,” but I don’t like anything right now.) My authentic white Tony Romo jersey—I also have a blue one for when the Cowboys wear those—has been stripped from my torso and is in a wadded ball in the middle of the living room.

It was horrible.

First, not having Tony Romo is going to be tougher than I thought. His replacement, Brad Johnson, did not do well today. He threw three interceptions. Tony Romo also throws many interceptions, but he throws a lot of touchdown passes, too. Brad Johnson threw for one touchdown. That is not enough.

Second, the Cowboys’ defense was terrible, and Tony Romo doesn’t play defense, so I don’t see how anyone can use his absence as an excuse.

The St. Louis Rams’ running back, Steven Jackson, ran for 160 yards and three touchdowns against the Cowboys. That was not Tony Romo’s fault.

Third, I think the Cowboys are not as good as they think they are. They have lost three of their past four games and now have a record of 4–3. Even when Tony Romo was not hurt, they were not playing so well.

Fourth, the Cowboys lost 34–14.

If I kept data on the quality of a day, and I’m thankful now that I do not, this would no longer be the best day ever.

Ordinarily, I do not write my letters of complaint until just before I go to bed, but I think that I need to do it earlier today so I can clear my mind and concentrate on The Big Project.

I have a thick green office folder of letters to Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones.

Mr. Jones:

I am sure you know why I am writing to you today. Your Dallas Cowboys played pitifully against the St. Louis Rams, and I have begun to fear that they will not make the playoffs. After all, Tony Romo will miss at least two more weeks.

I cannot hold Tony Romo’s injury against you. Injuries are part of the game, and no one can predict when they might occur. This would be difficult for me to accept if I were in your position, as I prefer facts and things that I can rely on. However, you do not seem to be bothered by the capriciousness of injuries.

I can hold against you, however, the fact that, as a backup quarterback, Brad Johnson appears to be far short of acceptable. This is something you should have known and accounted for in building a roster, as it is at least a reasonable possibility that the backup quarterback will have to play occasionally. With Tony Romo injured, it’s not possibility—it’s reality.

Finally, I must lay some of the blame at the feet of your defense. I have seen grandmothers who hit harder than some of your players. (This is not actually true. I have never seen a grandmother hit, and I could not, without some physical experimentation, say for certain that any grandmother could hit harder than your players could. This is a literary device called hyperbole.)

I thank you in advance for your kind attention to these pressing matters.

After filing away the letter to Jerry Jones—the thirty-eighth one I have written to him—I remember that I have more writing yet to do. I am corresponding with more people than I ever have before, and it exhausts me.

I log on to Montana Personal Connect and write a note to Joy.

Joy:

Yes, I agree that we should talk about meeting. You should know, however, that I do not like Garth Brooks. I hope this doesn’t make you reconsider meeting me.

I think it is better that I wait a while before telling Joy about the forty-nine letters of complaint that I sent to Garth Brooks.

My mind cleared of the unpleasantness of the Dallas Cowboys and the anxiety of having to respond to Joy, I am free to turn my full attention to The Big Project. I work away at drilling and sawing and connecting and screwdrivering (which isn’t really a word), and I think only a little about how the anxiety of responding to Joy is gone but that the anxiety of actually perhaps meeting her is very much here.

The work goes quickly; I did well for myself by sketching out some plans beforehand. It helps that I am very good with tools. I do not say that to be boastful. It is a fact, and I prefer facts. When I was at Billings West High School twenty-one years ago, the only class I liked was wood shop. There was no high school social strata there. The only question anyone had was whether you could do the work, and I could. Mr. Withers even made me the shop assistant my senior year. He told my parents when I graduated that I was the best student he had ever had. My father was so proud he was beaming. I still get notes from Mr. Withers on occasion. I think he might be the only person who ever noticed that I was at Billings West High School at all, although I would have to take a poll of everyone who was there at the time to know for sure, and I just don’t have time for that right now.

I might have liked to have been a shop teacher, but I do not think I could have put up with the rowdy kids and the parents and the paperwork and the demands of the principals. I am sure I could not. I don’t think there is enough fluoxetine in the world or enough wisdom in Dr. Buckley to get me through that.

The tool work done, I roll The Big Project up the stairs, out the back door, and into the garage. It’s time to paint—The Big Project, not the garage. The garage will come tomorrow.

Tonight’s episode of Dragnet , the twenty-fifth and penultimate (I love the word “penultimate”) of the fourth and final season, is called “Burglary: Baseball,” and it is one of my favorites.

G. D. Spradlin, an actor who appeared in three episodes of Dragnet , plays a man named Arthur Leo Tyson, and he cracks safes for sport. He’s an ex-convict who is on parole, and it turns out that he misses being in prison. This is a condition called “institutionalization,” and it sounds awful to me. And yet, Arthur Leo Tyson has much to look forward to when he gets back in “the pen.” The inmate baseball team at San Quentin expects to have a good season, and he wants to be a part of it. This amuses Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon, who take a liking to Arthur Leo Tyson even though he is an unrepentant criminal. It’s nice to think that police officers can be a little human.