Man of the House: Tailgating and nutting in the Midwest

These days, traveling is such a pleasure. At the TSA checkpoint at LAX, the little guy takes off his shoes and his T-shirt and is beginning to unbuckle his britches before I stop him from completely disrobing. I guess you can’t be too safe these days.

“That’s probably enough,” I say, urging him to keep his pants on.

“OK, Dad,” the 7-year-old says.

Later, walking through the first-class section of an American Airlines plane in Dallas, we are treated to toxic waves of aftershave. I steady myself on the seatback of some smug first-class passenger. You know the look you get from first-class passengers as you wend your way into steerage? That vanishes for a second, as they fear for a moment that we might actually sit down among them. I smile, wink and move on.

Anyway, I don’t think I’ve ever experienced aftershave like on this connecting flight from Dallas. Normally, I only experience pleasant smells — burgers on a grill, chicken wing sauce on the fingers of a passing waitress. But I’m here to tell you that this aftershave is almost its own weather front. My wife blames the men; I blame the women. It is Texas, after all.

Before I can scream “OXYGEN! GET ME OXYGEN!” we are back in the fine state of Indiana, the Napa of the Midwest.

In no time, we are on a prairie freeway on the way to the little girl’s college campus. For those of you with high school seniors, let me reassure you that they have these institutions in other states where you can send them when they become too know-it-all-y to live at home anymore. Your child will be remarkably happy there. And it’s a bargain: $100,000 to $200,000 is the going rate.

Financing such a thing is pretty easy if you’re smart about it. In the little girl’s case, we took advantage of all the options available: loans, grants and liquor store holdups.

What I like to do is send my wife, Posh, into liquor stores about midnight, after the kids have been there buying vodka and Red Bull all evening.

“Gimme your money,” she yells, “or I’ll pop you!”

Fortunately, she is so cute in her designer bandanna that she has never had to use the gun, which is really only a potato shaped like a little derringer. So it’s not just a gun, it’s also a side dish.

In any case, we’re back in the Midwest, where the onset of fall fits me like another round of puberty. I take early morning jogs down country roads, past half-lighted houses shrouded in wood smoke. It’s turning out to be another whiskey-gold Midwestern autumn. Fall arrives on a gust of wind, between my second and third beers of the evening.

Here in the heartland, football is opera. We tailgate on a little hill by the stadium, my buddy Jim bringing in lobster rolls from the cape, as he did last year. God, I love the way that sounds. “Lobster rolls from the cape.” It’s the kind of life I’ve always aspired to.

There is — and I’m including sweaty sex here — nothing better than standing at a tailgate party with a sandwich in your hand as 300 musicians pass by, playing some out-of-date rock tune, the sousaphones wiggling back and forth like giant silver coins. What a way to live. At one tailgate spread, Annie’s mom is proudly serving brownies shaped like little footballs. It might be the most American moment I’ve ever had.

I’m absorbing as much of the prairie culture as possible here. In my spare time, in fact, I’ve taken to “nutting,” which translates pretty conveniently into the collection of wild nuts. I was inspired by the little guy who, upon landing, filled all his pockets with acorns to the point where all of a sudden he just fell down.

A local Indiana columnist explained the hobby best: “There is double joy in nutting. While rustling through the leaves underfoot, I look for the wild nuts and enjoy Indiana’s tree foliage at its peak brilliance.”

She goes on to say that: “By now, the black walnut trees have dropped their heavy nuts.... Running a vehicle back and forth over the nuts while the nuts are still in their husks is one way of removing the leathery husks from the hard, wood-like shell of the round walnut encased within.”

I confess here that the thought of running my rental vehicle over a pile of walnuts entertains me for days. I want to do it, yet I don’t want to do it, for to actually perform this act will wipe out the anticipation of husking nuts with my SUV tires.

You must know what I mean. Oftentimes, particularly with nuts, the anticipation is sweeter than the actual activity.

Next week: “The Dog Attack,” or “Hey, That Butt You’re Biting Is Mine.”

chris.erskine@latimes.com