Like I Was Saying...

Hobie Cat's Last Ride

2011-12-30T18:36:00.006-05:00

Our cat of 10 years ago, Hobie (get it, Hobie Cat), was certifiably insane. We got an inkling of this when she began to eat plastic dry cleaning bags, or portions of them anyway, and throw up disgusting things in the house. So she was banished to (shudder shudder) the outdoors. This necessitated that I become involved in the logistics of making her excommunication as humane as possible. We didn’t want to be cruel. So I had to put in two cat doors that would allow Hobie to come into the garage to get warm, and on into the laundry room where we would keep bowls of water and cat food for her.

*insert here clip from The Godfather where Vito Corleone says to Tom Hagen “We’re not murderers, regardless of what this undertaker thinks”*

A determined albeit unskilled do-it-yourselfer, I began the task of installing the two cat doors (not good for resale) starting with the laundry room door. I discovered that they sell pet doors but they don’t tell you how to install them. So, under the influence of that old handyman adage: “measure twice – cut once”, I measured and measured and measured. Only problem was, I had the door off its hinges, lying across two sawhorses when this measuring was done. So it was only after I had finished installing the pet door and had begun to put the utility room door back on the hinges that I discovered a problem. I had installed the pet door, not in the bottom left corner as planned, but in the top left corner. I told no one. I just sneaked back to Lowe’s for another door.

Hobie grew progressively worse in the psychiatric department. She hid in the crawlspace beneath the neighbor’s house and uttered moans that could only be described as macabre. Maybe blood curdling. Anyway, they were loud, long and guttural sounds that frightened the neighbor's two small children in the middle of the night. The neighbor’s name was Jamie. He came over one day while I was outside and began the conversation with, “Is that your cat?” I knew this wouldn’t turn out well.

He told me about the moaning. He was nice about it, but the message was clear. Also disturbing was the fact that Hobie had begun the nasty habit of bringing home trophy kills and depositing them on the welcome mat. Mice, mostly. Some song birds. One very large Blue Jay. I wondered how in the world she managed to catch these birds. Were birds really that slow? I have to say I was as impressed as I was disgusted.

Although we did our best to care for her, Hobie's health soon began to fail and on the rare occasions when we saw her it was shocking to see her looking so scraggly.

“Just do it and don’t tell me about it until after it’s over,” Lorraine said to me one day.

“Do what?” I asked.

“You know… take care of Hobie,” she said.

“Oh… you mean eliminate her,” I said, doing my best mobster impersonation. “Wax her. Neutralize her. Take her out of action. Do her. ”

“Stop it!” she cried.

I was still going. “The big sleep. Off her. Turn out her lights….”

“I mean put her out of her misery,” she said quietly. I shut up.

I agreed to do it but I was uncomfortable about it. I understood mercy killing….when other people did it. But this was different. I guess my job in relation to the family pets was to serve as installer of custom entry doors and, oh yeah, hit man.

A few days later I caught a glimpse of Hobie, slinking around the front porch. She had just deposited a fresh kill at the front door and was waiting for someone to find it. It was then that an idea was born. It would give Hobie a chance at life and keep me from being a cat assassin. I put Hobie in the trunk of the car muttering, “We’re going for a little ride in the country, old girl,"

I drove west until I found the bucolic scene for which I was searching. There, in the twilight, was a small, friendly wood-frame farm house with outbuildings. A scene right out of “The Waltons” I reckoned. A driveway bordered by a wood fence curved up from the main road toward the front door. It was early spring and a wisp of smoke curled up from a red brick chimney and the windows of the small house glowed orange in the fading light. What an idyllic rural setting for Hobie’s new life! There was a pond nearby and I think I saw another cat or two, but I can’t be sure. In any case, I drove down the driveway as far as I dared, as if to turn around, and popped the trunk and let Hobie out. I wished her well and hoped that some kind soul would adopt her. If they didn’t, I reasoned, she would still be all right, wouldn’t she? Hadn’t she already proven her hunting skills beyond any reasonable doubt? If she was that good at living off the land, then certainly she would come to a better end here than she would at the hands of the evil Doctor VetVorkian!

Satisfied, I headed home. My cell phone rang and I answered it. It was a friend and they asked me what I was up to. So I told them about “taking Hobie for a ride” and didn’t think anything about it. He told his wife, however, and she told my wife and I got the hysterical call at work the following day.

We drove to the scene of the "crime" and combed the woods near the farm house calling the cat’s name, but of course there was no Hobie. I went to the farm house to inquire if they had seen a lost cat. Nope. We eventually sold that house with its superflous cat doors (very bad for resale) and what happened to Hobie is still a touchy subject. Lorraine’s vision is one of a small, helpless, Kibbles N Bits-fed little kitty being torn to pieces by feral dogs. I see a kind hearted farmer's wife, her gray hair in a bun, sitting by a fire, knitting, rocking, with Hobie softly purring by her slippered feet.

Hurricane Hype

2011-08-24T15:07:00.002-04:00

The following rant is brought to you by the makers of the new anti-hysteria medication, Damitall. Ask your doctor if you are a candidate for Damitall. You may need a dose if you have been watching the weather channel lately and had your stress level escalated by all the hype and hysteria associated with Hurricane Irene.

Irene is the first significant storm of the year and the Weather Channel is making the most of it. I'm right here, aren't I? I mean, the weather channel has nothing to do most of the year, right? Warm front here, cold front there, highs, lows, rain, sun. Yawwwwnnnnnnn! But buddy let a hurricane crank up out in the atlantic and they are all over it like a fat kid on a piece of cake.

Update!!! (dramatic music) A guy in a flack jacket comes on screen. He stands in front of a bush (leaves blowing in the wind make for good footage). If there is no wind, he's not above getting one of the boys from the truck to turn on a big fan. Maybe toss a few palm fronds up in the air and let them whiz by the camera. No, I don't know that for sure, but you know they're thinking it! I mean they want it to be bad so badly!

And talk about your superlatives! They sling around shock words like confetti on New Year's Eve! It's not a category 3 storm... It's a category 3 MONSTER. And it's not "moving" across the Bahamas... it's SLASHING across the Bahamas. Their producers must grade them on how many alarming adjectives and nouns they can cram into one sentence. Like:

"This category 3 "BEHEMOTH" is "PACKING" 115 mph winds and will "SLAM" into the coast tonight, "WREAKING HAVOC" on the southeast portion of the state!! In other words, "Run for your lives! We're all going to die!"

We lived in Florida when three hurricanes came ashore in 2004. We heeded the hysteria and left town for the first two storms. Nothing happened. Never lost a shingle. So we stayed home for the third one. Lost three shingles. All I'm saying is hold your fire, weather folk. If you call 'em all "monsters" then we won't believe it when a real one comes along... like Katrina maybe.

Bowl Games

2011-01-03T22:45:00.008-05:00

Arrrgggghhh! The agony of defeat!

     I am finally tired of college football.
      I'm sorry, folks, but it’s just gone over the top now. I mean, last night I was watching the “Frito-Lay-CrackerJacks-On-Sale-Now-At-Your-Local Stop-N-Shop Bowl" pitting the hapless "Fighting Mollusks" of Wotsitoo U against the loss-ridden Bean Station College “Raging Roosters”.

     Of course I'm exaggerating. But I do suffer from Bowl Game Overdose!  Whatever happened to the good old days when you had five bowls and they were all played on New Years Day? And the names made sense, too, like Sugar Bowl, Orange Bowl, Rose Bowl. It was bad enough that my beloved (but pitiable this year) Tennessee Vols had to play an equally nondescript North Carolina team in the superfluous “Music City Bowl”. But then some fat cats went and sold their name rights to, of all things, a mortgage company, and it became the linguistically challenged “Franklin American Mortgage Music City Bowl”, or call it the the “13-syllable-hard-to-say-Bowl” for all the difference it makes.

     Sure, I’m a little bitter about how the game came out. “We wuz ROBBED, I tell you…. ROBBBBED!” But that’s another story.

     Do you know why they call them “bowl” games? Back in 1916, Michigan and Stanford began the tradition of playing in the “Tournament of Roses” game. It was kind of an East-West thing they did at the end of the year. Then they built Rose Bowl Stadium in Pasadena, California, which, naturally, was shaped like a oval bowl. The name stuck. Now they call any major football event a “bowl”. Like when brothers Peyton and Eli Manning played against each other earlier this NFL season. They called it the “Manning Bowl”. And isn't the Auburn-Alabama game called the “Iron Bowl?”

    I have a few more bowl games to add to the already glutted post-season college football landscape:

TOILET BOWL - game for the two teams with the most penalties (they play dirty, get it?)
EMPTY BOWL - game for the two teams with the poorest attendance records.
DUST BOWL – game for the two teams with the worst offensive records (all they do is just run up and down the field, kicking up dust but never scoring, get it?)
FAST FOOD CAREER BOWL – game for the two teams with the worst academic records.
FURTHER REVIEW BOWL - game played just for officials. They get to review every play. The game will last two days and there will be no clear winner. Even the end of the game will be reviewed until the score becomes moot because no one cares (You would have to have seen the “Franklin-American-Mortgage-Music-City-Bowl” to understand).

Burnt Biscuits

2010-12-28T00:09:00.009-05:00

Dad, Mom, Sister Judy and "Granny"

Got an inspirational e-mail today... a story about a considerate husband whose wife burned the biscuits but he ate them anyway, pretending they were just fine. The couple’s young daughter notices this. She relates: Later that night, I went to kiss Daddy good night and I asked him if he really liked his biscuits burned. He wrapped me in his arms and said, "Your Momma put in a hard day at work today and she's real tired. And besides - a little burnt biscuit never hurt anyone! You know, life is full of imperfect things... and imperfect people. I'm not the best at hardly anything, and I forget things just like everyone else. What I've learned over the years is that learning to accept each other’s faults - and choosing to celebrate each other’s differences - is one of the most important keys to creating a healthy, growing, and lasting relationship”

Mom three years ago in front of our old house

Guess you can't argue with that! But it made me think of my own childhood. I have no biscuit story to tell you. Truth is, my parents argued a lot. I remember at six years of age being awakened by the sound of shattering glass and loud voices. I cracked open the bedroom door and had a clear view of the kitchen where Mother was throwing the family dishes at Dad, one at a time. Each of her angry outbursts was punctuated by the sound of a cup or a saucer crashing into the wall behind my father, who ducked and dodged each one like he knew Kung Fu. When mother ran out of the ceramic grenades, she ran from the room, crying, and locked herself in the bathroom. My father told her that if she didn’t unlock the door he was going to break it down. He pounded convincingly on it a few times and then I heard a click. He opened the door and went in. Hiding in the dark, I listened, waiting for round two. But all I could hear were their urgent voices, more muted now. I closed my door and crawled back into bed, heart pounding.

Dad and Mom in the early 1950's

     I lay in the dark envisioning our family disentegrating, wondering with which relative I would be sent to live. None of them were acceptable, not even the kindest, my aunt Iris, the hairdresser (called a “beauty operator"in those days). I sobbed until sleep overtook me.
     I awoke the next morning with a sense of deep dread and entered the kitchen cautiously, awaiting the awful announcement.  But it was as if nothing had happened!  No sign of the pottery shards on the linoleum floor...no angry looks on my parents' faces! My sister,who is four years older than I, showed no signs of having witnessed the fracas. Maybe she was a veteran of such combat and knew it was like a summer evening storm, the thunder and lightning sure to be followed by a cloudless quiet. We ate our oatmeal and toast while Mom busied about, getting us ready for school. Dad hugged her, said something that her laugh, kissed her on the cheek and left for work.
   I knew what I had seen had really happened. But I figured that if everybody else wanted to erase the ugliness and start over, I, too, would pretend.  So, nothing was ever said about it.
      Looking back, my mother and father were passionate about everything. They could go at it like territorial bantams one day and coo like turtledoves the next. They made up with the same enthusiasm with which they fought. They were as tender as they were vitriolic.
     They had been together 64 years when Dad died. Mother still keeps, beside her bed in the nursing home, a framed photograph of the two of them dancing on their 50th wedding anniversary. Each time I visit her she she will ask me, often multiple times, to reassure her that she will be buried next to Dad when she dies. She loves it when I tell her stories about their young life together, and I tell them to her over and over, knowing that, because of the Alzheimers', she will remember but for the moment. But the stories never include burnt biscuits

Beach in Winter

2010-12-23T12:22:00.003-05:00

Beach in Winter

       It has been some time, but I checked this week. The ocean is still there, right where the map says it should be… on the right, a big blue expanse with no writing on it.

       It’s not really blue in North Carolina, you know. The water along the eastern seaboard seems to opt out of blue until somewhere below latitude 30… around Miami I think. Here, on the Carolina coast, it is a mottled green, like the back of a muddy turtle.

       Of course, to be fair, I make this observation on an overcast day in late December from the 11th floor balcony of a high-rise condo overlooking the grand strand of a virtually deserted North Myrtle beach. What’s left of this tourist Mecca is shivering under a teeth-chattering cold snap. Fact: The Official Myrtle Beach Area Visitors Guide lists the average air temperature in January as a balmy 58 degrees. That’s almost tropical, I thought, eying the book’s happy couple, strolling past wind bent sea oats toward the inviting surf. But the weather obviously doesn’t consult the visitor’s guide and this day was definitely NOT in the brochure.

       Maybe that’s why there was such a deep discount on the condo? Yuh think?

Catamarans versus Monohulls
Speaking of, I do miss the water. Selling my 34-foot sloop “Sails Call” was the right thing to do, of course. It was just time. She was built in 1984. She was almost 90 in dog years. And, I was beginning to spend more time repairing the sails than setting them. I would like to get another boat some day but my recent catamaran charters in the Caribbean have spoiled me. I told myself that the slip fees alone would more than pay for an annual charter in the British Virgin Islands. And they did! But, thanks entirely to The Moorings, I now want a boat bigger thanI can afford! I mean, once you sit in the captain’s chair of a 46’ x 24’ twin-hull monster that costs over a half-million dollars, your sailing gyroscope will never spin the same! Sailing catamarans have one drawback – they don’t sail very well to windward. Aside from that, there are no negatives that I can see.

• DOCKING – Catamarans turn on a dime and park like Smart Car. By comparison, a monohull is a log in the water at the dock and can be painfully difficult to moor in a high wind.

• CABIN SPACE - No comparison! It’s like you’re in a house or something. My first monohull was a 23-foot O’Day. You could ALMOST standup in the center. The next one was a 30-foot Catalina. You could stand up in the center but you couldn’t move very far without ducking down. The 34-footer was much roomier. But the CATAMARAN! Think floating apartment!

• SAILING - Like butter! When you hoist the mainsail, you are sliding the leech up 60 feet (or more) of mast (you may need some help with this) But once sail-deployed, this dude has a lot of speed! Sure, in a light wind, it’s slow going. But anything between 10 and 20 knots is a pure dream! Virtually no heeling, either. I am a cruiser, not a thrill-seeker. Hey, If a pontoon even hints at catching air, I’m lowering sail and motoring toward the nearest port! Know what I mean, fellow chicken hearts?

• ANCHORING -- No sweat as long as the anchorage isn’t crowded. Last April at White Bay, Yost Van Dyke, BVI, we dropped a 50-pound plow anchor into 15 feet of turquoise water and held just fine in not the best ground. Come to think of it, we were surrounded by boats and never came close to bumping one of them!

Like I was saying...

I like the way this ocean draws a sand line and dares the high-rise buildings and the neon glitz to come any further. “Do all of that over there, behind those dunes,” it seems to say. “Come any closer and you’ll be under water, fool.”

And so the mad sprawl stops. The Tsunami of pavement and lights and piled up concrete freezes in mid crest, giving way to the placid mottled green of its ancient neighbor.

High School

2009-12-20T10:38:00.009-05:00

Nostalgia is a colorless, ordorless, narcosis-inducing gas which, once inhaled, goes straight from the nostrils to the frontal lobe of the brain and takes control. I think this may be why I visited my old high school last week. Or, more probably, it was the fact that a rock slide had closed I-40, forcing me to take the alternate route of I-81 to Tennessee to visit my mother, who still languishes in a Knoxville nursing home. Alzheimer’s takes away a little more of her each time I see her. Her thickening mental haze has now rendered her unable to complete whole sentences. It’s like she runs out of “thought”, like people run out of breath, and then a puzzled look comes over her white face as if to say, “What was I talking about?”

So I’m driving back home, thinking about all that depressing stuff, and the mellow voice of James Taylor comes through the stereo speakers opining that “The secret of life is enjoying the passing of time”. I am contemplating that when I catch sight of the green highway sign overhead that reads: “Tri-Cities Airport 1 Mile”. I am only four miles away from Holston High School where I spent four years of my adolescence between 1961 and 1965. On impulse, I take the exit, concluding that while enjoying the passing of time is not necessarily the secret of life, it is nonetheless a good thing to do if you can do it. Of course when he wrote that song, ol’ JT”s enjoyment of the passing of time was probably chemically induced, if you catch my drift.

The roads had changed a bit over the decades but I found the old building with no trouble. From the outside it looked almost frozen in time. But a closer look told me that it was no longer a functioning school. I peered through a dirty window into what used to be Mrs. Reynolds music classroom, now stacked with boxes gathering dust. A chain had been looped around the push bars of the main building’s double doors. But I could see inside. The hallway, which I had remembered as a colorful place 45 years ago, with the din of colliding conversations and slamming locker doors, was now an achromatic, silent tomb. I thought of a scene from the movie Titanic and imagined a fade-in of boys and girls walking the old wooden floors. But the place remained empty and dark.

I would learn later that the building had been condemned as a fire hazard sometime in the 70’s and was now some kind of warehouse for the Sullivan County School System. The main building of what was then called Holston Institute, had been built of stone around 1911. Over the years it had been cobbled onto to become a hodgepodge of wings and additions with mismatched bricks and windows. In 1960 the anachronistic “Institute” was dropped and it simply became known as “Holston High School”.

I got back into my car to drive away and I passed the old gym, which I think had been built sometime in the 1940’s. There were signs of neglect and disuse here as well. The gym steps, which had been a favorite posing area for class photographs, were now covered with vines. Plywood covered the windows. I drove onto the two-lane road that took me back to the interstate. As I merged with the northbound traffic, the sun was a fading orange ball in my rearview mirror and headlights of oncoming cars began began to wink on in the advancing gloom. As the miles rolled by, I thought of the life lessons learned in high school:

People can be cruel - One day in gym class Crandall Crane and Johnny Gobble got into a fist fight. Crandall was bigger, stronger and a clever boxer. His punches were smacking hard into Johnny’s face. I looked around for Coach Maddux. Surely he would stop it. I saw him nonchalantly watching the beating from a doorway, his arms akimbo, a slight smile on his face. Crandall’s next punch landed hard. Johnny went down, blood spurting from his mouth where he had lost a tooth. Only then did Coach Maddux put his whistle to his mouth and amble over to break it up.

People can be kind - I was a lumpy kid in the ninth grade and did not outgrow it until senior year. I remember Dorothy Rose, a ninth grade English teacher, who praised my work in her class and made me feel worthwhile. She inspired me to read and love books. As an adult, I meant to find her and thank her but I never did.

E.B. Sanders, who taught math, and knew I struggled with the subject, gave me passing grades even though I did not deserve them. I remember him winking at me when he passed back a final exam paper that I desperately needed to do well on in order to pass his class. I had missed 40 of 60 Algebra problems, guessing at many of them. But, to my sweet relief, he had scrawled a “B” in red grease marker in the upper right-hand corner of the paper! I never forgot his kindness but never thanked him either.

Life isn’t fair - Some of the boys who graduated back there in 1965 went on to colleges or they had low draft numbers and dodged the Viet Nam war. Others weren’t so lucky. I’m not sure, but I think one was badly wounded and I think one was killed. In those days, boys our age were prime fodder.

Some of the girls were blessed with beauty and charm; some weren’t. Like I said…life isn’t fair. Not all the pretty girls were coquettes, but it was clear that they enjoyed their position in the caste system. I remember senior year, seeing one girl in particular sweep the table of awards and nominations and elections. She was truly a queen, and to top it all, she actually seemed genuinely gracious about all of it, like the good queen in a Disney Movie fairy tale, which served to even enhance her regalness. Everybody eventually comes to earth in the real world. I wonder if she did.

Smedley and the Harson Hardly Hearer

2009-11-05T19:34:00.002-05:00

It took years for Smedley Harson to perfect his hardly hearing machine, witch he did one strange night quite by an accidental twist of fade. When Smedley was just a wee libby toady, his first wards were “huh?” and “wot”, which came out like “huhhhh?” and “whaaat?” because he was hardly hearing and had a speaker disorder too.

As things turned out, which they often did, Smediey and his lab assistant were busily one night inventing the hardly hearing device, which Smedly had cleverly named “The Harson Hardley Hearer”, when all up and a sudden the lab assistant yelled out for Smedley to turn up the watts.
“Wot?”, Smedley yelled back, which came out “whaaat?”.

“Yes,” yelled the the lab assistant.

“Yes wot???” Smedly yelled, now clearly disturbed. And with that he whacked the contraption which began to work quite perfectly and did from then on.

“What just happened?” yelped ,the lab assistant.

“Yes, it certainly did!” replied a smiling Smedley, who could hear quite nicely now.

Tomato Farming

2009-08-20T15:26:00.005-04:00

My grand tomato fiasco started in the produce section Harris-Teeter. It was like a scene from “The Godfather”… you know, the one where Vito Corleone buys fruit from a sidewalk vendor before Virgil Solotzo’s men plug him. I was strolling along, bag in the left hand, fondling ripe tomatoes. After careful scrutiny, I selected four specimens and headed for the checkout.

The sign had said “organic” so I figured they wouldn’t glow in the dark or poison my liver. I was expecting to pay ...maybe a buck or two. But SEVEN DOLLARS! “I’m HIT, Fredo I'm HIT!”

Hey, it’s not like I am a frequent shopper, or anything, but how can four tomatoes cost SEVEN DOLLARS? It was then that I got the bright idea to grow my own. How hard could it be? Right? Dig a hole. Stick in the plant. Cover it with dirt. Wait for it to give birth to ripe red tomatoes just like out of grandma’s garden. When I was a kid, my grandmother had a vegetable garden which produced beautiful, sweet tomatoes. Not like the thick-skinned tasteless balls they sell in the super market.

The home and garden section of Lowes wanted $17.00 each for something called “Beefsteak Tomato” plants I asked the guy how many tomatoes each plant would produce in a season. He said 40 or so. I did the math. Not a bad deal! So I bought two of the plants and set to work. I got the shovel off the tool rack in the garage and looked around for a suitable spot. “Plenty of sun and good soil,” he had said.

I found what looked like a good spot, right beside the driveway. I brushed aside the pine straw and crunched the shovel down into the dirt with my foot. The spade was hitting something. A root probably. I put all my weight on the next thrust. The shovel resisted at first and then then I felt the blade slice through the obstruction. It was then that I noticed that I had cut through the main trunk of the phone line. Egad! So THAT’S what them meant by “please call before you dig.”

I discovered when I called them on my cell phone that ATT does not take kindly to such things. When I explained what I had done I endured a scolding a lady who I imagine looked like the "church lady" from Saturday Night Live. Yes, they would come out and repair it. Yes, the cost of the repair would be included in my next bill. No, they couldn’t fix it today. When I explained that I needed my phone for business there was a pause. “I guess you should have thought about that before you tried to dig your hole,” she said.

“ Yes, maam,” I said, sheepishly. “What’s the earliest you can send someone out?”

“Five work days,” was the reply. There was no negotiating with her.

Chastened, I went back to my plants, this time trying the other side of the driveway. After an hour or so I had my two plants properly in the ground. Now to sit back and watch them produce a bumper crop of red, ripe tomatoes.

I checked every day for two weeks and FINALLY! Little green buds! I could see them in my mind. Growing bigger and bigger until finally the day would come when I would have a bush laden with tomatoes the size of softballs. How easy it would be to go pluck them and slice them up. Hah! I was liberated! No longer a victim of super market tomato fraud!

The first little guy came along in about a week. I watched him turn from green to light orange… then light red. He was the first of a litter of five. Four more little guys were following close behind. But when he turned fully red he wasn’t the size of a softball. Nor even a baseball! More like a golf ball! No matter, I told myself. He is probably a “preemie”. “Tomorrow,” I thought. “Tomorrow I will pick him, wash him, and slice into his plump little body.

The second disappointment came when I plucked him from the vine. To my horror, the entire bottom, which had been hidden from view, was a moldy mess! Had it been gnawed by a squirrel? Foiled by some fungus? Was I watering too much? I remained hopeful for his little brothers, however, who now numbered seven. I had all confidence they would ripen normally... but it was not to be. They were all buggered up with holes and spots and rot.

Disgusted, I declared my career as a tomato farmer officially over. I uprooted what remained of my “garden” and tossed the scraggly vines into a heap for the garbage truck. All that remained were three little fellows, still green. At least some hope remained.

I learned that once you pick a green tomato, they don't get any bigger. I put the little trio in the sun where they could ripen, protected by the screened-in porch where blight, the rabbits, or whatever couldn't eat a hole in them. One just started turning orange. He is the largest of the lot. About the size of a hen egg. I am waiting. When he ripens I intend to celebrate with a half BLT sandwich, which I figure will have cost somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 bucks.

Mom

2009-07-25T02:40:00.006-04:00

In the last year I have watched my 86-year-old mother, who has Alzheimer’s, get progressively worse. The scores of tiny cerebral infarctions she suffers each week rob her brain cells of the nutrients they need to retain information. She used to forget where she put things. Now she forgets where she is.

Last Fall, her one good knee gave out on her, leaving her wheelchair bound. Then, last Saturday, I got the call that she had fallen and broken her hip. When I got to the hospital, I heard that what I feared to be the case was true. This was no hairline fracture that would eventually heal. It was a clean fracture of the part of bone that separates the ball, where it goes into the hip socket, from the femur. If she doesn’t have hip replacement surgery, risky at her age, she will be bedridden.

I listened to the doctor explain all the risks and thought of the disclaimers that pharmaceutical companies put on their pill advertisements. “Side effects may include death…” That one gets your attention. As her next of kin I had to make the decision. The nurse handed me a clipboard where a single sheet of paper spelled out in print the same dire risks the doctor had just gone over with me verbally. I stared at the signature line and hesitated. What would she want?

I asked the nurse for a little time and stood beside Mother’s bed. She was awake and I noticed how clear and blue her eyes were. Are the eyes truly the “windows of the soul”, I wondered? Maybe peering into hers could tell me something. She was smiling sweetly and her eyes seemed to be searching for the substance of something of which she was only vaguely aware. She looked almost childlike… as if each moment was new and unfamiliar to her.

I thought about the sensitive, intelligent woman I knew growing up. She was beautiful then, too. I remembered how that when I was in the second grade she drove me to school one day. I was late and she walked me to my classroom. As we entered the room I felt the eyes of my classmates on me and her. I quickly pulled my hand from hers and while she talked to the teacher I found my seat. The kid behind me leaned forward and whispered, “Your mother looks just like Marilyn Monroe!” I was so proud. I think it was the first time I thought of her like that. It occurs to me now that I did know who Marilyn Monroe was and knew her to be the epitome of girly prettiness.

But Mother was always a pretty woman. And even now, despite her many afflictions, she still wears pink lipstick in the hospital bed and worries about her hair. At first I thought how like our family it was….to be so concerned about appearance, even in a setting like this. But then I looked at her frail, hopeful face and instantly regretted the critical thought. I recognized about her that her real beauty lay in the fact that she did not surrender to any of the maladies that gnawed at her health and pushed her away from youth. She fought them determinedly. That's what the lipstick meant. This docile octogenarian, despite her mental haze, was a fighter. And, although she could not articulate it, I knew what she would say if she could. I knew with certainty now that she would opt for risk over safety if she knew that, for a few more summers at least, she would keep her mobility. If she were making the choice, she would tell the people with the lab coats and stethoscopes to do their best and she would do the rest. Smiling down at her, I had my answer and wrote my name.

The beach at night

2009-07-02T00:33:00.012-04:00

This beach changes when night comes

People drag themselves reluctantly away

leaving a million footprints

in the fading sun

for the incoming tide to erase

A waxing moon plays hide and seek

With silver clouds that eventually scatter

leaving a lonely pale disc

to loaf across an empty sky

The Low Country

2009-06-12T22:05:00.023-04:00

I got hooked on recorded books in the late 70's. The technology was cassettes in those days and I must have gone through five or six of those yellow Walkman sport tape players with the FM radio built in. In the 90's CDs came out. I stuck with the tape players, however, because the CD players skipped if you used them while you biked or jogged.

Then my daughter got me an Ipod Nano in 2006. Now I can download the books on CD to my computer and transfer them to the Ipod. I love it! I can strap the tiny little thing to my right arm and bike and read to my heart's content. (no safety lectures, please)

Right now I'm re-reading "The Prince of Tides" by Pat Conroy. The book is set in the "low country" of South Carolina just below Charleston. I had forgotten what a good writer he is. Here's an excerpt:

"The moon quivers on the water of an inbreathing tide, a pale disc nickeling in the current. Above us the stars are in the middle of their perfect transit through the night and constellations are reborn in the luminous mirror of tides below us. On either side of us, the marsh accepts the approach of the tides with a vegetable pleasure -- an old smell of lust and renewal. In the low country the smell of the tides is offensive to visitors. But it is the fragrant essence of the planet to the native born. Our nostrils quiver with the incense of home, the keen pasteel of our mother country. Palmettos close ranks at head of each peninsula and the creek divides into smaller creeks like a vein flowering into capillaries. A sting ray swims just below the surface like a bird in nightmare. A wind lifts off the island like a messenger bearing the odor of moon sage and honeysuckle and jasmine. In an instant the smell of the night changes, recedes, deepens, and recedes again. It is sharp as vinaigrette, singular as bay rum.”

Is that some pretty stuff or what?

In the spring of 2005 I found myself single-handing "Sails Call", my 34' sail boat from Florida to North Carolina. It was a good time to be alone and on a boat in the low country. I found solace behind her wheel and renewal under her sails that year. I was taking her up the Intracoastal Waterway in four-day legs. The remote barrier islands of South Carolina had Indian names like Wapoo, Edisto and Kiawah. I cruised by them, slowly taking in the sights and smells Pat Conroy describes so well in his book. On one stretch, there was no marina to pull into for the night, so I anchored in a wide spot of the ICW (Intracoastal Waterway), lay in the cockpit, my head on a makeshift pillow, and watched the stars slowly appear until they were pinpricks on Elvis velvet. It was better than therapy.

The ICW , when you get close to Charleston, narrows to a manmade channel called Elliott Cut. The current there, heavily influenced by the tides, can either keep you dead still while your knot meter says you are doing six knots, or whip you through the cut at 12 knots with your motor idling! When I went through the cut, the tide was ebbing back through Charleston Harbor rushing into the Atlantic so the current was very swift. It was indeed the closest thing to sailing downhill I have ever known.

I had read up on Elliott Cut in the guidebook, but I didn't anticipate the trouble I would have with a draw bridge that stood between me and the entrance to Charleston Harbor. I knew the bridge was there. What I didn't know is that it only opens on the half hour. As the small bridge loomed, I hailed the bridge tender on VHF channel 13 asking for passage. He radioed back and said I would have to wait for another 20 minutes. This meant that I would have to turn the boat into the swift current and motor against the flow for 20 minutes, and this I did. But even at full throttle, I could still detect my stern slowly sliding back toward the bridge. I could imagine hearing the 40-foot mast crunch into the span and I cursed myself for not reading the cruising guide more thoroughly. About then the bridge tender saw me struggling and graciously opened the bridge early. As soon as I turned the bow around, I felt the surge of current shoot me through the open bridge like a bullet. I radioed my thanks and he drawled back, "You're welcome, Skipper."

Charleston Harbor was a busy place and I spent the next two hours dodging huge freighters and tankers and even a war ship until I got back into the slow and serpentine ICW and the same lazy pattern as before.

Weather

2009-05-25T00:16:00.005-04:00

Officially, summer is a month away. But we're already seeing hot days that suck moisture out of the earth and give it back in the form of afternoon thunderstorms with whip-crack lightening and driving rain. This afternoon, when I saw the bottom of the clouds turning blue, I figured that if I were going to go out for some two-wheeled therapy, it had better be now. I was right. I was just finishing my ride when the cumuli overhead started their bombing run just as I pulled the bike into the garage.

I stood on the back porch and watched it rain. The wind wrestled with tops of the trees for about 30 minutes, then the pines stopped swaying and the sun came out and it was over. Just like that!

Don't know why, but I have always loved to watch violent weather.

Five years ago, I stood on a beach during the approach of a Florida hurricane... Charley, I think. I leaned into the 75-mile-per-hour wind like a sky diver.... feet spread wide apart, hovering at a 70-degree angle to the ground. A police cruiser came by and motioned me over. He told me they were going to close the high-rise bridge and that I should move inland. I felt a little embarrassed. I had become one of those guys the Weather Channel reporters derided for not seeking shelter.

In September 1996 I watched Hurricane Fran roar over our house in North Carolina. It was dark, but there was enough light to see pine trees bend like tall grass in the wind. One minute, the wind was howling and the trees were bent almost double. Then, suddenly, the wind just stopped. The trees straightened in unison like a troupe of dancers done with a routine. The eye of the storm was passing over. The skies cleared and stars actually came out briefly. The calm lasted about 10 minutes. Then I heard the roar of the wind coming back, this time blowing in the opposite direction, the trees again submitting to its will.

Old House

2009-03-22T23:12:00.006-04:00

Alzheimer’s stalks my 86-year-old mother like a cunning thief, stealing a little more of her memory each day. I like to put it back sometimes.... even if it is temporary. Our conversations of late seem to be trips down Memory Lane, so recently I checked her out of the nursing home for a day and took her on an actual tour of the several houses our family lived in from 1950 to 1966 in Kingsport, TN.

I always list Kingsport as my "hometown". I was six years old when we moved there. When I went looking for the first house I could remember living in I had no street name in mind. There were vague memories of walking to school with my sister. So I reckoned that if I could find the school, the house would be easy to find. But memory is such a trickster! The path we took to school seemed so much longer than it actually was. In reality, the house was a mere 150 yards from the school, which, by the way, was still there and still an elementary school.

I drove around the neighborhood until I finally saw a small, one-story frame house that matched the one in my fragmented memory banks. But how could the house have been that small? Another memory trick? Not really... after all, 54 years ago I was only three and a half feet tall! So everything seemed bigger, I reasoned. I retrieved the digital camera from the front seat I told Mom I would only be a minute and took a couple of photos of the house. Someone had maintained it pretty well, I thought. They had even added a front porch. We drove away in search of the next place we lived and we drove I recounted to Mom a couple of events I remembered from those days:

Our first television. Dad sold Admiral television sets. That’s what we called them…. “sets” He brought home a small portable “set” he had borrowed from the store. The picture was fuzzy so we sat it on a kitchen chair near the front door. Dad worked with the rabbit ears until the snowy, fuzzy picture became a bit clearer. We watched an old western starring John Payne. How wonderful it all was. The “set” went back the next day. I would be six more years before we would have another TV in the house.

A violent argument between my mother and father. . She threw plates and cups and saucers at him and he yelled at her to stop. When she was out of china she locked herself in the bathroom, sobbing. He pounded on the door, demanding entry. I Peering up at the fracas from my bedroom door. When I was finally noticed, my father led me back to bed and assured me that everything was all right. But I was frightened. Was our family breaking up? What would happen to me? Would I live with my grandmother? But it was a passing storm. The next morning it was as if nothing had happened. Mom smiled through breakfast. Dad kissed her good bye and then went to work. Mother did not remember the episode. I never knew what sparked the fight.

Being in love. My first grade teacher was Miss Ellen Rudd. She smelled like flowers and was beautiful. Because my last name started with a "B" I sat close to her desk and stared at her, so prim and pretty with a smile that said "You're special" every time she looked my way.

While Riding Before Rain

2009-02-28T16:09:00.009-05:00

WHILE
RIDING
BEFORE
RAIN

A blue heron lives on this lake
I see him often at the point
Where I stop the bike to think
And watch the water break

He has no complications
No need to sort things out
No dreams, anticipations
No sacred faith, no doubts

He has found a fish today
With supper in his gullet
His mission is complete
He can soar now home

Therapy Days .... from 2006

2009-02-07T18:48:00.006-05:00

I took a couple of “therapy days” at North Carolina’s “Crystal Coast” last week. For this to work two elements have to converge: good weather and free time. It’s like planets lining up. If they do so perfectly, the bike and I are in the truck heading east on Highway 70, seeking that peaceful feeling that only the sea can provide.

Thursday was a perfect sail day -- winds out of the Southwest 12 to 15 knots, seas two to three feet and not a cloud in the sky. I can single-hand the 34-foot Catalina with relative ease now. After disconnecting the shore power cord, I cast off all but the windward stern line. This I run to the mid-cleat and then loop it back to the wheel where I position myself, my bare feet feeling the thrum of the diesel and the cool of the fiberglass cockpit sole. I check the lights and gauges and begin reversing out of the slip, keeping an eye on the depth finder. This basin needs dredging and the tide is going out. I nose the bow into the narrow channel that connects the slip basin with the Intracoastal Waterway. It's tricky here and very shallow . The digits blink out the distance from the bottom of the hull to the sand below:“3.6….5.2… 6.0” … and in a few minutes I pass green day mark 27 into the deeper water of the ICW. When the channel curves into the wind, I set the wheel and reach for the winch handle and hoist the mainsail. With the main up and a gentle, steady breeze off starboard, I pull the cable and kill the diesel and release the line to unfurl the 150 Genoa. The big headsail catches and fills, making “Sails Call heel 10 degrees. She slides noiselessly under the high-rise bridge as the mellow voice of James Taylor comes from the cockpit speakers:

"My daddy used to ride the rails

So they say, so they say

Soft as smoke and as tough as nails

Boxcar Jones, old walking man

Coming back home was like going to jail

The sheets and the blankets and babies and all

No he never did come back home

Never that I recall"

As the sloop exits Beaufort Inlet and lopes into the Atlantic, I reflect on the fact that after 12 years of coming here, I still do not tire of these waters. I expect to see wild ponies, descendants of Spanish galleon livestock I am told, running the dunes of Shackelford Banks or dotting the grazing fields of Bird Shoal. Along the route to Cape Lookout, I watch confidently for the gray liquid shapes of dolphin whose game it is to race my bow just below the surface of green water. I know that if I am patient, I am likely to see the mottled green back of a large sea turtle silently break the surface and then disappear in Lookout Bight. Thursday did not disappoint me in any of these respects.

Friday blew five knots more that I wanted to handle alone, so I opted for two-wheel therapy. I took the Trek 2300 out of the bed of the Ford and saddled up for a blacktop cruise. After a circuitous 20-mile ride over some of the water-lined back country of Carteret County, I ended up in Beaufort, just as the sun was beginning to make long shadows.

I confess that I have a weakness for historical markers and old graveyards. I leaned the bike up against an ancient iron fence and entered the “Old Burying Grounds”, a cemetery that dates back to the 1700’s. I have been here before. Each time I find something new. Hundred-year-old live oaks shade these tombs and graves, all of which point East. Why? The story goes that the graves face east to enable the resurrected dead to face rising sun on judgment morning. I ponder on this. It doesn’t jive with the slogans on monuments proclaiming that the departed are already up in heaven. What? Do they leave the angel band and return to the crypt to rise?

I pass the tomb of little Vienna Dill -- 1863-1865. The child died of yellow fever and was buried in a glass top casket. Years later, curious vandals exhumed her body and found it intact. But she quickly deteriorated when they opened the casket. She was reburied and now a heavy concrete slab marks the spot, atop of which lies a stone cherubic figure of a child sleeping on her side.

Nearby lies…er.. stands the body of a British sailor who died aboard ship in the port of Beaufort during the Revolutionary war. He wished that he not be buried with his boots off, so he was interred standing up! The grave marker reads:
“Resting ‘neath a foreign ground
Here stands a sailor of Mad George’s Crown
Name unknown and all alone
Standing in the rebel’s Ground”

In January 1886, the “Crissie Wright”, a three-masted schooner. encountered bad weather on her way north and tried to make it into the shelter of Lookout Bight. But her main mast brace parted and she drifted helplessly onto the shoals where she lay broadside and was broached by every incoming wave.

Many of the shorefolk tried in vain to help the sailors. They built a bonfire, hoping the men would swim to it. But those who tried froze to death in the attempt. The next morning, the waves subsided and the whalers were able to reach the schooner. They found four men wrapped in the jib sail. They were all frozen solid but one, the ship’s cook, who was barely alive. He died a year later. Except for the cook, all the victims of the wreck were together in a common grave here. The locals still have an expression: “cold as the night the Crissie Wright came ashore.”

On the Craven Street side of the graveyard is the “Rum Keg Girl”. The story goes that an English family, including an infant daughter, came to Beaufort. The girl grew up with a desire to see her homeland and persuaded her mother to allow her to make the voyage. Mom agreed, butmade the father promise to bring her back “in one piece”. The girl made it to England, but on the way back, she died. Ordinarily, she would have been buried at sea, but for the promise her father made. So he purchased a keg of rum, drained the contents and sealed his daughter inside and buried her when he returned. The marker was hard to read. I couldn’t make out the dates.

Daylight fading, I find the bike and leave the graveyard still telling its stories to any who would come close enough to hear.

Slow is good

2009-02-06T12:09:00.002-05:00

My daughter asked me the other day, “Dad, why do you pick slow things?”

“What do you mean, Sugarbear?”

“You like to ride your bicycle and you like to sail,” she said. “Motorcycles and motor boats go a lot faster.”

Guilty as charged. As to why, let’s see…Motors belch smoke and make noise. Maybe It’s an age thing. I don’t like noisy people and I don’t like noisy things.

Also, consider this: Last time I sailed to Cape Lookout, with the world sliding by, like a lazy carousel backdrop, I heard a splash off the port bow and saw a pod of dolphins break the water right in front of the boat. They were this close! Just inches below the surface. You could see their undulating silver shapes shimmer through the water. They were playing with the boat, racing her. You just don’t see that in a power boat. The noise scares them away.

It’s winter now and I don’t get the opportunity to ride the Trek 2300 as much. But when a warm day comes along I will take to the two-lane paved roads that cross-hatch the rolling farmland just west of our neighborhood. On one such day recently, I rode past a cemetery. I had clicked the derailleur into a high gear, preparing for a slight downhill grade, when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a young woman, her back to me, standing beside a new grave. I was moving quickly but I saw that she had in her right hand one of those foil balloons. She was staring down at a fresh mound of dirt.

I continued my ride and made the turn-around at Highway 751 and then began to pedal home. By the time I passed the cemetery a second time, the woman was gone. Curious, I pedaled over to the fresh mound of dirt. His name was Ronald Brennan, age 24. The balloon was still there, bobbing in a light breeze. It bore the words “I (symbol for heart) You”. Articles that had been placed around the grave let me know that Ron had been a musician. A styrofoam guitar studded with flowers made some reference to an “angel band”. Several people had signed it. I wondered about the balloon woman. Was she a friend? His girlfriend? His wife?

I finished my ride and slid the bike back onto its rack in the garage. I was still thinking about Ronald Brennan as I removed my helmet and shoes. After a shower, I plugged his name into Google. Nothing. But when I searched local obituaries, his name popped up. He had died seven days ago of bone cancer. He played and sang at people’s weddings and parties but his regular job was doing construction. No mention of a wife or why he had died so young.

Disney

2009-02-01T11:50:00.007-05:00

I’m in this tunnel last night, OK? And all I can tell you is that it’s long and dark and damp. And I am moving through it with great difficulty. For some reason, my feet won’t obey my brain. I can see the end of the tunnel and what appear to be street lights and tree branches. So it must be nighttime outside.

I know it is a simple matter of crawling to the light and stepping out into the open. But inexplicably, I can’t move forward. I am stupidly preoccupied with my pockets. I am searching every pocket….for what? I can’t tell you.
I never do make it out of the tunnel. I wake up first. It is 4 o’clock in the morning. I tell myself to remember this dream. And to make sure I do, I replay it in my mind before dozing off again.

We took the grandboys to Walt Disney World recently. It was crowded the day after Thanksgiving. There was an hour wait for Dumbo. So while Drake, the older one, went with Aunt Katie and Uncle Ryan to ride the flying pachyderm, I took little Xander, put him on my shoulders to plug the cry valve (little kid didn’t know he was having fun), and got in the shorter line for the “Hall of Disney Heroines”. This is where Cinderella, Snow White, Tinker Bell and the others stand in perfect character, greeting children and smiling for photographs. But Xander wanted no part of it. Not even the professional Disney Handlers could coax him into it. He took one look at pasty-faced Cinderella and his wail increased by at least 20 decibels. So, we left the building and found the Dumbo riders.

Disney, from a cynic’s point of view, is a velvet money trap starring Mickey Mouse as the high priest of pickpockets. But that aside, it does have a unique atmosphere that can cheer the disconsolate adult and mesmerize the kids.

When I knew the picture session with Snow White and Xander wasn’t going to happen, I asked Snow White if the rumors were true about her and Sneezy. She winked and said in her best cartoon voice, “Oh my! I love ALL of them just the same!” I’ll bet you do, you ol’ frog kisser. No, wait, that’s another fairy tale, isn’t it? And if “When you wish upon a star your dreams come true” like the song says… does that mean that I will find myself crawling through some tunnel sludge for real? Just asking.

Insomnia

2009-01-28T00:06:00.004-05:00

It's my old friend Insomnia
Here to keep me company again.
Nothing much on television
Hitler on the History Channel
Six-minute abs and ginzu knives for sale
Outside an upstairs window

The wind wrestles with treetops
And the moon is a muted spotlight
Above our sleepy street.

More Old Photos

2008-12-27T19:46:00.008-05:00

Another old photograph out of the jumble caught my eye. It was sepia tint of the Bartley family taken around the turn of the century. Typical of family portraits taken in those days, no one smiled. In fact, they seemed to almost scowl. Unlike today’s toothy poses, having your picture taken back then was apparently serious business. It must have been popular to try to look as if someone had just died.

My grandmother, the oldest of James and Martha Jane Bartley’s six children, stood prim and erect behind her stone-faced father. This 8x10 was a reproduction from a larger original that I had seen on a wall somewhere. I wondered…did the Bartley family still gaze somberly into someone's living room? Or had the oval mahogany and beveled glass that once framed their faces been consigned to some attic or garage somewhere.

I couldn’t give a name to all the faces but I knew my cousin Norma would know them all.

“Well, the one on the left behind Grandpa Bartley is Granny”, she said, referring to our grandmother, Roxie Thompson. “The little boy holding the horse is Uncle Hodge.”

“Look at that face," I said. "He looks like someone just licked all the red off his candy.”

“That’s Lillie beside Granny,” she said, ignoring the remark. “She died real young. I think your mother was named after her.”

My mother's name is Anna Lillie Thompson. I had not known where the Lillie came from until now. I wondered how old her namesake had been when she died and why she had died so young. Norma said she didn’t know.

Left to right from Lillie was Bonnie, the spunky one, and Grace, whom I remembered as a stately woman who seemed to typify her name. “Granny Bartley” held little “Flo”, the youngest, on her lap. I had seen “aunt Flo” (short for Florence?) once when I was six years old. I remembered only that she lived in Michigan and owned a television. I had never met Uncle Hodge.

This box of pictures had taken the better part of my afternoon. There were bills to pay and e-mails to answer. I hefted the plastic bin back onto the shelf and resumed my work, thinking how like wind-driven seeds we all are. We start off together, hatchlings and parents, on the same path. Then the winds of circumstance catch us and carry us off to new ground where we leave our imprint on places and people and thereby alter the cosmos. Is this dispersal of our essence part of the master plan? Are we just part of the clockwork? It comes to mind that the first funeral I attended was that of the patriarch of this old photograph, Grandpa James Bartley, in Rose Hill, VA. I can still see him, pale and waxen in his casket, his trademark thick mustache, now gray, his most dominant feature, even in repose. I remember being frightened and, at the same time, intrigued by the spectacle of death. I remember staring at the old man's mustache and wondering why no other men in the room had one.

2008-12-25T09:54:00.002-05:00

Our family snapshots are myriad. But, alas, we have been poor stewards of them. Sure, a few are in photo albums. But most of them (my guess is 600 or more) lie unceremoniously crammed into a large, blue Tupperware box. And there they sit, a photo-chronological scramble, frozen moments in time, a life’s cast of characters tossed in a tumble like old dolls in a box.

I know better than to go near this crypt. But the box was off its perch on the office shelf last night, and needed putting up. Bad move. I began picking through its contents and before I knew it, the inert gas of nostalgia was in my nostrils, controlling my brain.

There were the “slide” years. I took transparencies in the early 70’s. Soon, I tired of holding these up to the ceiling light. The projector broke years ago. Then there were the black and white years. In the mid to late 70’s I worked for newspapers and developed my own. I was never without the Nikkormat 35 mm or the big Bronica SLR large format. (what ever happened to that camera?). I always had an unlimited supply of Tri-X 400 ASA b&w on hand. Those were the days before digital cameras and auto settings when I could still think in F-stops and shutter speeds.

Most numerous were the color photographs of the kids growing up. But what kept me in brain freeze mode the longest were the old monochromes and sepias I inherited after my father died.

I saw an oval picture of my grandmother. She was in her 20’s and a very pretty woman. Her hair was in a bun and her eyes were clear and wide. She had a slight smile that rivaled the Mona Lisa’s for mystery. She was newly married, I suspect to a man she barely knew. Her expression said she was in a new place where she was not entirely comfortable and knew a secret about her feelings she would not tell.

Growing up, I often stayed with her for weeks at a time. I watched her lug bushels of apples from a dark cellar, peel each one and then cook them into apple butter in a large iron pot. One day I went with her to feed chickens and discovered that one of the birds was doomed. She gripped the unsuspecting hen and with a quick cranking motion of her bony hand, broke its neck. This violence from such a sweet lady seemed incongruous but somehow was normal on the farm. She cut off the chicken’s head with a butcher knife. I watched the headless fowl attempt to stand until, in a few seconds, it went limp. We called my grandmother “Granny”.

Another unframed snapshot was that of my grandfather on Mother’s side. He sat, unsmiling, dressed in his farmer overalls, in a rocking chair on the front porch. “Po”, as we called him, was not a religious man. But he knew his bible, even though he would be the first to admit to not living by its principles. I think it was his refusal to swallow the pabulum of the preachers that later caused most of his children to search for truth. One day, when I was 9 years old, let me tag along with him on the farm. He sharpened a hatchet on a foot-powered grindstone. Then he led me into a thicket of cedar saplings and selected just the right one. He cut it down and shaped it into a very functional bow. He notched it, strung it and taught me how to shoot it. I never forgot that. When my son was nine years old, I repeated the ritual, all the while, thinking of the man we called “Po” who died when I was 11.

Other old photos surfaced like nuggets in a miner's pan. One was a 1939 picture of my mother and father, young and in love. Dad was rakishly handsome and my mother was, as kids today say, a real hottie. It was the pre-war days of Benny Goodman swing and jitterbug. He was cutting timber and she, well, she lived near the stand of trees. I stared at the picture a long time, wondering what it would have been like to know them and be the same age. Would we hang out? Or would they think we were stuffy and un-cool.

Dog Loser Knob

2008-12-16T22:09:00.000-05:00

We sat, perched atop a slab of solid quartz, Dan Wax and I, munching on granola and trail mix, drinking in the in the panorama of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The sky was cloudless and deep blue and the visibility was forever. By noon, the sun was a bright yellow disc high in the Southwestern sky. “The Shining Rock”, an outcropping of white quartz, formed the face of one of the mountain peaks in the Pisgah National Forest near Brevard, North Carolina. The irregular, jagged shape of the boulders made them easy to climb and the view from the summit was – there’s no other word - breathtaking. To the Northwest was Cold Mountain. I am told it was the basis of a book and later a movie. To the South was the Blue Ridge Parkway where cars moved along like ants in a conga line. The Parkway had been cut across the very top of the Appalachian mountain ridges and paved by CCP workers in the Great Depression era. From our perch we could see a good 30 mile stretch of the serpentine two-lane blacktop road. Farther off in the valley, lay the mountain town of Greenville with it’s sister city, Spartanburg.
We finished off our high-energy lunch with a last swig from our canteens and then began the descent to our campsite below. We had chosen a flat area beside the trail to set up our three-man tent which we shared. We had learned by experience that the two-man tents were for very small men. When we reached our campsite, we looked at our watches and calculated that we had about three hours of daylight left. We began combing a nearby copse of trees for dead limbs and dry brush. October has a fickle thermostat, exaggerated by the mountains. We had shed our wool shirts and were down to our tee shirts. This was work! It would have been easier to take Dan’s hatchet and chop down a tree for our campfire that night. But we didn’t do that for two reasons: (1) All the instructions for wilderness camping say to leave growing things alone. Don’t even pick the flowers! (2) Starting a fire with green firewood is next to impossible. But before long, we had a large stash of small limbs and some large logs for later when the fire was big enough.
As the sun went down, so did the temperature, dropping 30 degrees in one hour. Campfires warm the side of your body that is facing the blaze. If you are facing it, your front is toasty warm while your back freezes. So, we alternated sides like human rotisseries, to stay warm.
“This must be what it’s like on the surface of the moon”, I said, taking another swig of our “medicinal purposes” brandy.

We dragged a large log and rolled it into our fire. Sparks rose 50 feet into the night and we worried we would set our tent ablaze, but our fears were unfounded. We drank hot chocolate and waited for our propane stoves to cook dehydrated potatoes and dehydrated beef stroganoff. We talked until our fire dwindled to brightly glowing embers and decided it was time for bed.

The moon, in its waning phase, was just beginning to make its debut and the stars, having no competition, appeared as tiny spotlights of varying sizes against a black velvet curtain. We could pick out Cassiopeia, Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, the two constellations that shared ownership of the North Star, and Orion was barely visible on the southern horizon. Braving the sub-freezing temperatures we quickly stripped down to our underwear and crawled into our sleeping bags and were warm within minutes. This was our second night of undisturbed by a ringing telephone or any sound not produced by nature. I was getting used to it and I imagined what it would be like to live this way, in the wild, relying only on one’s skills as a hunter for food and just living off the land. Somewhere in mid-thought the daydream became a night dream and I drifted into unconsciousness. We slept the peaceful sleep of far away and out of reach

The next morning we awoke to 15 degrees and convinced ourselves against our will to exit the comfort of our cocoons and put on our stiff jeans for another day. Dan had had the bright idea to put his clothes inside his sleeping bag but he didn’t share it with me, so my dressing was considerably more uncomfortable than his.

Dog Loser Knob was so named because of a grove of dwarf magnolias that grew on the top of this wind-swept peak. The tops of the trees formed a thick canopy maze. I wondered… Who had named this place? Had some cartographer lost his dog up here? On the south end of the grove was a large flat grassy area, which made the perfect camping spot for our final night in the woods. We pitched our tent and gathered firewood again. In the last hour of daylight, our fire ablaze, we ate a freeze dried something that tasted like hamburger helper. It was another crystal clear night.

The next morning, our last day in the wilderness, we dismantled our tent, strapped on our noticeably lighter backpacks and headed down the trail and back to civilization. I have heard it said that deprivation is the soul of appreciation. After four days of playing Daniel Boone, a hot shower and a soft, comfortable bed never felt so good. But a part of me still yearns for the quiet, open air. I would visit Shining Rock two more times, once with my son when he was 16 and again with my daughter when she was 12. But I have not, at least to this point, been back to Dog Loser Knob.

Spear Fishing near Shining Rock

2008-12-16T00:42:00.000-05:00

The Shining Rock, located in the heart of North Carolina's Shining Rock Wilderness, is aptly named. It is a solid outcropping of white quartz about the size of a 10-story apartment building. 10 miles below its summit, I blinked awake and zipped open our tent flap. Darkness had given way to a pale but distinguishable dawn. The sun was painting the tops of the pines a light pink as Dan Wax and I stepped outside and shrugged into our Patagonia jackets. Our breath made clouds in the air as we talked about breakfast. Something about all of this made us both ravenously hungry.

We had pitched our tents beside a small creek the night before and now we ambled over to take a daytime look. To our amazement, we saw at least a dozen of what appeared to be to us (no fishermen we) rainbow trout! They had congregated in a shallow pool just past our boot tops. The thought occurred to us that if we could but catch one of these fish, it would make an excellent meal. But neither of us knew how to go about it. But hadn’t we seen on television how that you could lash a knife to the end of a stick and make a spear out of it? Yes! That would be quite easy. Dan unsheathed his “survival” knife while I looked for some string with which to lash the knife to the end of my walking stick. We deemed it a spear when the knife refused to wiggle when wedged into the bark of a pine tree. We were ready.

Dan was the first to try. He stood over the slowly wiggling trout and picked one out of the bunch to impale. He was actually quite surprised when he thrust the homemade lance into the water and did not get one. Undaunted, he tried again… and again and again. Remarkably, the trout did not offer to leave their spot. They simply darted to the side as the blade entered the water.

We later concluded that one problem with this type of fishing is the phenomenon of refraction. When thrust into crystal clear water, the spear seemed to bend off at a slightly different angle. When it was my turn I could have sworn the knife tip was going right for the gills! But then it veered 15 degrees to the right. What I lacked in skill I tried to make up with enthusiasm. But to no avail. The fish would live another day.

We laughed at ourselves as we undid the lashings on our homemade spear. We cooked grits and oatmeal over our small propane stoves.

As we ascended the trail, the creek shrank to a brook and then became a runnel with small waterfalls that tumbled between mossy boulders. This portion of the trail was really a gorge which time and erosion had etched. The footpath we followed veered in avoidance of giant fallen trees, the victims of some ancient windstorm. It seemed like some mysterious netherworld from the pages of a fantasy book, both foreboding and inviting. The trail steepened. We began to climb, one foot in front of the other, a slow, ascending plod, until we finally broke out into bright sunshine and an azure sky. We had reached the “bald”.

In the North Carolina Mountains, the peaks are often so windswept that trees do not grow on the very tops. Instead, one encounters a grassy lea that looks to be a natural pasture. These make excellent camping grounds.

The midday sun had coaxed us out of our jackets and these we tied onto our backpacks. We checked our maps to be sure, but there was no mistaking our destination. Shining Rock lay approximately three miles by footpath from bald on which we stood. From this angle, it was massive, snow white crags framed by dark green stands of pine. Dan and I drank in the view, munching on trail mix, mentally preparing our tired legs for the last three miles. Tonight we would sleep on Dog Loser Knob.

Shining Rock, Dog Loser Knob

2008-12-13T23:04:00.000-05:00

This crisp weather makes me want to go backpacking again. It's been a while, but you never forget your first time.... four days of "roughing it" in the North Carolina's Shining Rock Wilderness Circa 1982.

Backpacking, as the term implies, requires that you carry on your back everything that you will eat and wear for the duration of your trip.

It's always good to go with someone experienced. Dan Wax of Columbia, SC had gone once, the year before, on a portion of the Appalachian Trail in the Great Smoky Mountains. To hear him tell it, he nearly died of thirst. He had made the mistake of not considering where they would get drinking water. There apparently was none on the portion of the trail they chose to walk. But Dan's negative experience had not dampened his zeal for the sport (is it a sport?) and I was happy to follow his lead.

First stop: "The Great Outdoors”, a shop specializing in rental hiking gear like backpacks, sleeping bags, etc. to people like us who didn’t want to spend a thousand bucks but still wanted quality gear. We paid Ten bucks each for a Kelty backpack, $15.00 each for a North Face minus 30 degree sleeping bag and we invested another $50 or so in such things as compasses, trail maps, cooking gear and food.

The experts at the “Great Outdoors” said they had two words for us…. “pack light”. We took lots of light weight dried foods like powdered soups, grits and powdered potatoes. Cooking oil was a must and could be mixed with corn meal and water to make hoecakes, always a favorite around any campfire!

We parked just off the Blue Ridge Parkway and began to “saddle up”. With our 60-pound packs strapped to our backs, Dan and I resembled top heavy biped pack mules. Our sleeping bags topped the packs and the entire ensemble exceeded our height by around 14 inches. We were to discover that balance was key. Lean too far over and you go down. My pack was heavier because I carried the 6-pound tent.

With the fading sun an orange ball behind us in a cloudless sky, we trudged toward the Art Loeb trailhead. The detailed topical maps we had purchased that morning showed every little dip and rise in the mountainous terrain. We reckoned our first campsite was about three miles away near a creek.

This was before the days of GPS. We found out where we were and figured out where we were going by first spotting a landmark on the map, then finding it on the horizon. Then we placed the flat compass on the map and pointed it at the landmark. That done, it was a simple matter of turning our body with the map until we were oriented and walking. It seemed to work! But these were not just woods. This was a big place with miles and miles of isolated country. We had both heard the stories of campers who had entered and were never heard from again.

We walked two miles along a mountain stream that was home to rainbow trout over a foot long. Suddenly we came upon a grassy clearing and knew without consulting the map that this was our campsite. We assembled our tent in the thickening darkness. Night sounds were strange. Owls whooed and wind whistled through the branches of the trees directly above us. The down sleeping bags were cozy warm within 15 minutes and we slept soundly despite the fact that the temperature outside was in the low 30’s.

The next morning we awoke to a crisp blue sky and we could see our breath as we worked to strike our tent. We had not built a fire the night before but we would this night. But ahead of us now lay 10 more miles of the Art Loeb Trail and the summits of Dog Loser Knob Shining Rock Mountain. The names of these places on the map were intriguing and beckoning. “Dog Loser Knob”. I couldn’t wait to see this place. – to be continued

Something Old, Something Blue

2008-12-12T00:17:00.000-05:00

Sometimes on warm summer evenings I think of her and wonder whatever became of her. When I was 16 she was all I ever wanted. For some reason, at that age, I didn't realize that she wasn’t much to look at. Compared to others I would own later, she was downright ugly. But at the time, all that mattered to me was that she was mine and she took me where I wanted to go…. most of the time, anyway.

She was a blue 1953 Chevrolet six cylinder straight drive four-door sedan. At least most of her was blue. The gray primer spots on the passenger side door and right rear fender only served to give her more character. Important note: the radio worked fine and picked up WKIN, the only rock and roll station around. In those days, AM was king. FM stations played elevator music with no commercials and nobody (at least nobody I knew) listened to FM radio.

I bought the car from my father, who owned a small used car lot near the Tennessee-Virginia border. A customer had traded the Chevy in for a newer model Plymouth station wagon. The bulbous blue hulk was not perfect, but the price was right. I could have it for what Dad had in it. I handed him my life savings. The wad of bills amounted to $175, and he made the title out to me.

There was a giant rip in the driver’s seat. I fixed that with a $5.00 nylon slip-on cover. The floorboard holes I covered with plywood and rubber floor mats. After rubbing every speck of grime from the paint, I hooked up the wet-dry vacuum and removed 10 years of accumulation from her insides. The sun was fading and she was as clean as I could get her that day. So it was time to go cruising -- she with a cloud of blue smoke belching from her tailpipe and I with my arm out the window and my wrist draped stylishly over the steering wheel.

If there had been a contest in the 1960s to gauge the “cruisability” of small American towns, Kingsport, Tennessee would have scored high on the list. Broad Street was a half-mile long with circles at each end. It had four lanes and five stoplights. The south end had a U-turn at the old train station and the north end terminated at “Church Circle”, so called because of the five large brick churches that ringed the top of the circumference.

And so, on a warm summer evening in 1964, with the moon a muted spotlight and three bucks in my pocket, I nosed the ’53 Chevy into a right turn off Center Street and joined the sluggish line of traffic for the first time as a driver of my own. With the windows down and the radio up, Jake Pyle and I traversed the half-mile stretch again and again, listening to the Dick Biondi show on WLS Radio in Chicago. Another station we were able to pickup after dark was “WOWO” in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The Beatles were all the rage then. That, and what we would now call "golden oldies". WKIN signed off with the Star Spangled Banner at sundown, yielding the higher watt stations.

Elbows out our windows, Jake and I cruised for hours, watching in silent wonder the occasional “Chinese fire drills”. These were performed with great precision by cars with six or more occupants. At one stop light, the doors of a jet black 1957 Chevy flew open at and a scramble of teens leaped out, circled the car, and reentered on cue, slamming the doors as the light changed. The driver “burned rubber” and the car lurched forward 40 feet or so before slowing for the next stoplight.

“Showin’ off,” said Jake.

“Yeah…Daddy’s car goes real fast, “ I said, my envy transparent.

The summer of 1964 ended and my senior year in high school began. “The Blue Bomb ferried me to school faithfully that year. There were the occasional breakdowns so I learned to be a mechanic of sorts. I at least knew how to change dead spark plugs, replace burnt rotor buttons and cracked distributor caps. I knew how to coast off hills and pop the clutch to start the engine when the six-volt battery failed me. I carried a case of oil in the trunk and with every fill-up, replaced the quart that had leaked out of the motor housing or blown out the tail pipe.

In the years that have followed, I have owned many cars - new ones, used ones, big ones, small ones -- but all of them were just cars that took me where I drove them. None stay in my memory like that old blue Chevy. It was an automobile.

Katie

2008-12-01T21:52:00.001-05:00

My little girl visited last week. She is 24 years old now.... all grown up and belongs to someone else. But she is still my little girl.

I came across this scrap of paper today. It's a note I wrote to her teacher when she was in junior high school. But it still describes her:

Dear Ms. Walsh:

Your note asking us to describe our daughter Katie was received and we are happy to include these observations.
Katie loves school and has a strong desire to excell. She agonizes over a C and wants to make the highest mark possible. She will be a diligent student.
Katie is:
* Quiet … until you get to know her
* Orderly (organized her crayons by hue and length at age three)
* Reluctant to speak up when treated unfairly
* Keeps negative emotions to herself (will NOT let you see her cry)
* Motivated by challenges
* Frustrated and anxious if challenges are beyond her grasp but won’t admit it
* Sensitive
* Responsible
* Fun loving
* Loyal to her friends
* A lover of routine and slow to take chances
* Witty (sometimes too much)
* Pleasant company if in a good mood
* Able to get ANYTHING right if given a second chance
* Always taking up for the underdog
* A deep thinker, very religious.
* A hard worker most of the time
Katie’s strengths are her desire to excel and succeed. She is mature for her age and focused on her goals.
Thank you for asking us to share these observations with you. I sincerely hope they are useful.

This morning was December 1. I folded my arms against the morning chill and watched her taillights disappear around the corner at the end of our street. It occured to me that we know each other from different perspectives. To her, I have always been an adult. But I, on the other hand, have seen her metamorphose from a small, wide-eyed toddler to a beautiful bride and now a young homemaker. Her knowledge of me is linear and constant while mine of her is kaleidoscopic and multi-dimensional.

And so it goes. I think I got the best end of this deal.

2008-07-30T21:06:00.001-04:00

It was barely three months after my father’s death that I found myself standing in the room where he had been born. Midday sunlight streamed through gauzy curtains, illuminating a small room with a high bed.

I studied the dark wood furniture and wondered about the birth. Was it was during the day or was it after dark when Flora Bowen pushed the fifth of her six children into the world? Who was with her in this small space? Where was my grandfather when the blessed event took place? Did he pace nervously outside on the porch? Or, after so many children, was the birth of this one just another in a series? If repeated often enough, even miracles become commonplace, I mused.

I thought about what life was like 85 years ago when this little East Tennessee crossroads community increased its population by one. I am told that it was not uncommon for women to birth their children at home. The nearest hospital was a day’s journey over rough, unpaved roads.
The bedroom was situated on the southeast corner of the old Bowen home place which had been built on a knoll beside the junction of State Roads 33 and 70. Highway 70 snakes over Clinch Mountain, winds along the blue-green Clinch River before crossing it, and then makes it way over Powell Mountain to the Virginia State Line. Highway 33 is a valley road. It begins at Kyles Ford and tracks westward past small farms until it reaches Sneedville, the county seat of one of the poorest and least populated counties in the state.
It was my father’s sister, Betty, my last living aunt, who had organized the family gathering on what was to be a humid Memorial Day weekend. It was to be a gathering of the clan - branches of the family tree of Milum and Flora Bowen, both now decades deceased. But this reunion was not to be quite the same as those of earlier years. All but one of the siblings had passed away and the fabric of the Bowen clan was further unraveled by the cousins moving away to have families of their own.
The stately old house was showing its age. The upstairs floors sagged and the peeling green paint on the tin roof revealed a previous darker coat. But the house still had the warm, comfortable charm that had made it a local landmark.
This was hill country where hospitality was expected of the more genteel folks, and Flora and Milum Bowen were known for their graciousness and generosity. It was not uncommon for travelers of even the slightest acquaintance to drop in, share meals, stay all night, and breakfast with the family the next morning, all completely free of charge or obligation. Even offers of pay were waved away. But there was one thing my grandfather wanted from them. He was Hancock County Court Clerk, an elective position he had held for years. “Do a favor for one person and four of his friends will vote for you,” he reasoned. And it was true.
A post office and general store sat just across the road from the old house. Here, local folks could catch up on the news, conduct business or just kill time. The country store seemed to have one of just about everything. When I was a boy, My Aunt Edna ran both the store and the post office. I can still see her, in her plain, cotton print dress with pockets on the sides, standing behind the store counter. A short 10 paces to a double door transformed her into a postal worker.
My cousin John, who now lives in the old house, gave me permission to visit the upstairs rooms, two of which were repositories of century old antiques. I stood in the farthest corner of one of the rooms and looked out the window, toward the river. With my eyes, I could trace the two-lane blacktop past a small cinderblock garage, and over the Clinch River Bridge. A modern marvel of its day when it was built in 1927, the steel span bridge was constructed to keep motorists from having to drive their cars and trucks through the river at its shallowest point - thus the name, Kyles Ford. In the days before the bridge, when drivers would stall out in midstream, it was not unusual for Milam to hitch up his team of mules, hook a chain to the bumper, and save a car from the swirling clutches of the swollen river.
From my perch, I could see the bend in the river where my father said the original ford had been. He was a seven-years old when the bridge had been built. If the river was high, Dad said, you could cross by ferry. That is, if you could find the farmer who operated it. That could be difficult, he explained, especially if it were tobacco harvesting season. Burley tobacco was the only cash crop and every family had a “patch” they tended.
As the picnic lunch was being gathered on the porch below, I poked around the dusty old room that time seemed to have forgotten. Grim faces stared at me from the wall. Couples in daguerreotype framed in dark ovals glowered down through convex glass. Old mustachioed men and solemn-faced women -- Who were these people, I wondered? I recognized one as my great grandfather, Daniel Bowen. He was a man of some physical stature and was a prominent Baptist preacher in the 1800’s.
I came across a frail, leather bound Bible and gently lifted the cover. The flyleaf proclaimed that it was owned jointly by my grandparents. I wondered who wrote the inscription. When it came to religion, my grandfather was, although a good man, not known to be overly devout. My grandmother handled the religion in the family. The ancient Bible contained dates, names and places regarding the “solemnification”of the union of Milum and Flora Bowen, but I wanted to know more. How had they met? Were times so hardscrabble in those days that there was little time for romance or sweet words on moonlight strolls? Or was that something postponed for another generation? I wanted to know them as young people. My only recollection of them was as old folks, weathered and bent. How did they live as newlyweds. Somehow I could not picture Milum saying sweet things to Flora, in print or otherwise. These were stoic people who valued industry far too much to waste time on such frivolity. I carefully closed the brittle leather cover of the large Bible and thought of what it must have been like, raising a family in the hard times of the Great Depression.
My hand felt the smooth, ancient wood of an oxen yoke hanging on wall. In the corner was a tall, wooden box-like device that I discerned was a type of phonograph that played cylindrical recordings. There were several strange looking tools, the use of which had long since been forgotten. A coffee grinder sat atop a stack of dusty books. What hands had applied themselves to these, I wondered?
I heard my name, “Tom-mee”, called by a soprano voice that I recognized as my cousin Dorothy. I had been discovered missing and began to make my way downstairs. I heard talk and laughter on the porch below. As I rounded the banister of the staircase, however, I had to pause again when I saw a more recent photograph of my father standing beside a black 1951 Ford. He had just bought the car and driven it to his parents’ house to show it off. That must have merited the photograph. Dad was in his early 30’s. He looked dapper and casually wore the invincible spirit of youth and self confidence. He was bullet-proof and immortal with a wide smile and coal-black hair combed straight back like movie stars of the day. I remembered riding in the car. Our family of four would make the trip on the dirt and gravel roads from our home in nearby Rogersville over Clinch Mountain to the Bowen homestead. On the way there, it was Dad’s custom to pull the car off the road when we reached a roadside spring. This particular spring gushed water straight out of a rock on the side of hill. Someone had focused the water with an iron pipe so that the stream splashed very near the macadam surface of the road. The water then formed a small brook that ran alongside the road before disappearing into a nearby creek. Locals never questioned the water’s drinkability and came with jars and jugs to fill and take home.
My vision of my grandfather, “Pappy” Bowen, as we called him, is very clear. He would sit on his porch, wearing overalls, rocking, whittling, smoking, watching cars pass by on the road below, and occasionally raising his hand to wave at the drivers. He smoked handmade cigarettes which he rolled with the deftness of a surgeon. With one hand, he fished a tin of Prince Albert smoking tobacco from a top pocket in his bib overalls and maneuvered it over the filament-thin paper he held in his other hand. After sprinkling just the right amount of loose tobacco onto the paper, he would roll it with the thumb and forefinger of one hand until it achieved the proper shape and then seal it with his tongue. Another pocket contained wooden, “strike anywhere” matches. These had blue heads with a white dot on the end and could be struck… well, anywhere. .A porch rail would do. A shoe sole was acceptable. A swift rake along the leg of a chair, or even the pants leg of his overalls. I would watch the blue-white flame erupt and fill the air with sulfur and blue smoke. He would cup his weathered hands and join the end of the cigarette to the flame, wave the fire dead with two fans of his wrist and let the match fall to the porch floor.
Milum was a pleasant man with a cherubic face and a ready smile. He died when I was 16 and I regret never having a real conversation with him. He was alert and probably full of stories. But then again “Pappy Bowen”, as we called him, always spoke in a series of “remarks” that were not really intended to be conversation:
“Looks like we might be in for a storm”, he would say, glancing up at the weather. Always the consummate politician, he never pressed an issue too far ….even opinions on the weather left room for compromise. We “might be” in for a storm… but then again, we might NOT be. If you had a reverse opinion, there was an avenue of agreement open. “Road’s right busy today,” he would say, striking another match.
“Granny” Bowen was a spindly, spry woman when I knew her. She took great pride in the fact that she had worked every day of her life. At the age of 82, she was still doing what she had always done…. milking cows, gathering eggs, hoeing the garden, canning vegetables -- anything to avoid idleness, which she said was the ”Devil’s workshop”. She was a kind, generous woman, intelligent despite her lack of formal education. Her eyes had a unique twinkle that let you know she was always thinking. My father had the same twinkle. I noticed it also in his sisters.
Growing up, I had the impression that my Father’s home in Tennessee and my Mother’s home in Virginia were worlds apart. In 1995 I took a nostalgia trip with my 11-year-old daughter, Katie, and for the first time I began to recognize that, even though they were in different states, these two places were separated by a mere 20 miles.
I had looked forward to this trip, not just to see old family members again, but to bike the “Trail of the Lonesome Pine”. I had loaded the Trek 2300 into the back of the van. After complimenting the women on such a fine lunch and saying goodbye to my cousins, I strapped on my riding shoes and helmet and struk out on Highway 70 for Powell Mountain. I made good time for the first five miles while the road followed a valley at the foot of the ridge. At first, the blacktop rose and sagged with the undulation of the land. Then began a tortuous cascade of swithbacks up the mountain. My feet made small circles at the base of the bike frame, urging the two-wheeler up steeper and steeper sections of the serpentine road. I rode in the sitting position as long as I could and then stood to keep momentum.
Thick, cumulous clouds, piled high overhead like great cotton balls, mercifully shielded me from the sun. Halfway up, I paused at an overlook to see how far I had come. The road below was a writhing black snake. Ahead, I could see the pavement disappear around a curve where a brown sign with white letters spelled out “Trail of the Lonesome Pine”. This was the stretch of road written about by John Fox, Jr. Once a wagon road, It was along this stretch that a handsome young mining engineer from the city walked to court a beautiful Virginia mountain girl. The novel, written in 1919, was made into a movie in 1936. The sub plot had to do with the great coal boom in Southwest Virginia when the discovery of coal and iron ore forced the proud mountain people to make drastic changes in their way of life.
My legs ached and my lungs burned. My breath was coming in a rhythm that matched the pumping of my legs. I kept thinking about the topof the hill which was now within my sights. I thought of the sweet freedom of the downhill run, coasting fast and free, and the flat easy stretch into the small Virginia town of Jonesville.

Honeysuckles and Blood

2008-07-30T20:32:00.000-04:00

I work a lot in Virginia these days. There are as many historical markers and Civil War battlefields here as their are gas stations. Sometimes, between appointments, I can't resist the call of these places.
The brown sign near Spotsylvania read: "Stonewall Jackson Shrine - 5 miles". I was going to turn left and head up I-95 for an appointment near Fredericksburg, but instead I nosed the Prius up the two-lane road and followed the signs. I was curious. What was the "shrine"? Why was it here? As I crossed the tracks of the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad, I made a left and followed the signs to an empty parking lot. 60 yards away sat white house where the famous Confederate general went to recuperate after losing his arm. He was riding through a dense forest one night during the Battle of Chancellorsville and his own soldiers shot him, mistaking him for the enemy.
The wound weakened him and he caught pneumonia and died in this little white house. The historical markers told how it all happened. I stood alone in the fading sunlight and read the markers and studied the old photographs.
I walked over to the house. It was after 5 p.m. and I supposed the caretaker of the "shrine" had gone home. I looked through the windows and saw the bed where Stonewall took his last gasp. It was popular for people in that era to have "last words". His were "Let us cross over the river and sit in the shade of the trees". I wonder if he really said that or if it was just something someone made up to add to his legacy. Just sounds kinda fake to me. People don't keep track of "last words" these days, do they. Gerald Ford died a couple of years ago. What were his last words? Nobody knows. Nobody Cares.
Yesterday I got up early and took in the Bull Run battlefield near Manassas VA. The northerners call it Bull Run, after the little creek that winds through the countryside 25 miles west of Washington DC. The Southerners called it the "battle of first and second Manassas".

"You are here" said the historical marker. I read how thousands of men marched into cannon fire and died that way, grape and cannister blowing holes through their lines. Other thousands died from rifle fire or hand-hand-fighting. I could not help but wonder how many of those doomed men had "last words" other than cries for help or water. Right at the spot where I was standing the ground had long ago absorbed the blood of these men, turning it into fertilizer for grass and flowers. The sweet scent of honeysuckle was thick in the air and the only sound was the lazy hum of bees in the clover at my feet.
One more thing about last words. I like the last words of famous Irish playwrite Oscar Wilde, who died in 1900. His last words were said to have been: "Either that wallpaper goes or I do."

The Tunnel

2008-07-30T11:56:00.000-04:00

It rained last night. The kind of hard rain that interrupts your sleep. All clatter and commotion. The downpours came on suddently and then faded, only to begin again. It was as if there were a giant faucet in the heavens and some giant hand were turning it on and off.
This morning's sun was golden on the shallow pools in the street and silver on the tiny leaves of the boxwoods that line the front of the house. It was to be a clear day with low humidity. Only a few tattered clouds remained from last night's storm and they drifted overhead like ill-shorn sheep grazing a deep blue sky. I backed the Prius out of the driveway with the GPS set for a street address somewhere in West Virginia. Driving through the Virginia mountains (the only way to get there) requires that you drive over the Appalachian mountains. Ocasionally it means driving through them.
"Turn On Headlights" the sign commanded. "Tunnel 1 Mile Ahead". Interstate 77 leveled out like a long runway and seemed to stop at the base of a huge mountain. Then a small black dot appeared that grew into a yawning black hole on a concrete face. As traffic whizzed closer to the hole, I wondered how long it took to build this modern marvel. I wondered how poeple got across this rise in the terraine before the tunnel existed. It must have taken them forever.
The black maw, with it's extended asphalt tongue, gobbled up the car and truck in front of me and then, suddently, I, too, was swallowed from sunlight into the tube's darkness.
An urgent voice from the dashboard said "GPS signal lost!" The little direction machine was troubled. It had lost contact with its orbiting triangulate god. How could it know that all was not lost and that in two minutes its programmed circuitry would reconnect with the three satellites and come to life again?
I don't know what it is about the Appalachian Mountains. To be sure the Rockies are great mountains. I can clearly remember some years ago driving west on the flat side of Colorado and watching the first glimpse of the Rocky mountains emerge purple on the horizone like a vast second sky. Magestic enough! But there is something special about these wizened hills that geologists say make up the oldest mountain chain in the world. That aside, I am a product of it all. Six generations ago one of my forebears left Bath NC toward the end of the Revolutionary War and struck out for the East Tennessee hills which lie in the heart of Appalachia. He had to leave under cover of darkness because he had picked the wrong side in that conflict. Now, without the threat of being tarred and feathered, he could get on with the business of fathering the next five generations of Bowens.
It was during this muse that the tunnel ejected me, along with a sputum of other traffic, out its other end. A rush of sunlight filled the car and the GPS burped to life. "Drive 45 miles," said the machine's cheery male voice. I looked at the small screen and saw that I was still in Virginia, approximately 100 miles northeast of the place along the Clinch River where my father was born. Charleston WV lay 200 miles and two tunnels away.

June Bugs

2007-12-22T23:23:00.000-05:00

So I called my 85-year-old mother yesterday to see how she was. “I’m fine,” she said, “just as happy as a June bug.” I smiled. I hadn’t heard that country expression in over 40 years.

Explanation of the idiom - When June visits the hill country of Eastern Tennessee the sweet scent of early summer strikes some kind of chord within the "Phyllophaga" a genus of the beetle family, AKA “June Bug”. They cover the lawns and fields like an undulating bug blanket, hovering above things that are ripe and sweet. They love overripe fruit, particularly apples. Their name, "Phyllophage", actually means "loves figs".

This little six-legger is emerald green and about the size of a dime. He can fly, yes, but seems to accomplish this task reluctantly and with considerable effort.. He buzzes about about slowly, like a C-5 cargo plane loaded with tanks.

WARNING: This next paragraph is off limits for animal rights activists who think insects should be afforded the same status as mammals. As kids we would go out with a jar and capture a few “June Bugs”. Then we would tie a string to one of their back legs and fly them like living kites. (OK, ok... I said we were kids, didn't we? It's not like we were dragging puppies around.) The fun was to watch these green little guys buzz around like drunken pilots. I remember that just the right size of string had to be used. Too fine a thread could sever a leg. Too thick and heavy a string would slow the them down. It had to be extra-light cotton kite string.

When we had about a 8 or 10 of the little critters aloft we would tie the strings to a bush and watch them tangle their lines. Sometimes we would tie them to a piece or notebook paper and release them as a squadron. Yeah, I know. It really wasn't such a nice thing to do to a bug, was it? But those were the halcyon days of summer in the 1950's, when clouds were white crayon smudges against an azure sky, afternoons were eons and, for two weeks anyway, "June bugs" ruled..

Stars

2007-12-06T00:00:00.001-05:00

Last night was cold diamonds on black velvet. There was Orion in his warrior pose, sword hung rakishly from his famous belt. Ursa Major is shy this time of year and doesn't appear until well after midnight. By the way, Ursa much prefers his hipper moniker, "The Big Dipper".
What makes this constellation so very useful is the fact that the outside wall of the Big Dipper's pan always points to Polaris, the North Star.... the only star that doesn't move as the night slides by. Reassuringly on the job, the North Star was where it always is -- due north, pointing the way for sailors and other sojourners.
The water beyond the pilings where "Sails Call" is moored is dark, shivering in a north breeze. As I lie in the cockpit star gazing with binoculars, I can't help but wonder what it would be like to strike out, get outside the sight of land and sail under that twinkling canopy to Bermuda. Never happen.
Too cold, I open the companionway and step down into the warmth of the salon. Three stations to choose from on television. Outside, the current of the Intracoastal Waterway drifts slowly toward Beaufort Inlet on a falling tide and the universe is spinning as it should. We are the one's who are spinning, really, but you know what I mean.

Sumo 1993 - 2007

2007-11-18T23:52:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow, our dog Sumo will be put to sleep. I may put it off until Wednesday, but it has to be done this week. It’s just time. She won’t eat. Not even the soft expensive stuff. She has been getting weaker for a few months now. This week her back legs simply went out from under her and she couldn’t get back up. There was a time when she would bound up the stairs and follow you into the TV room. Now she can barely negotiate the three shallow steps that lead from the front porch to the lawn. I suppose your legs wouldn’t work very well either if you were 100 years old. That’s how old 14 is in dog years.

I won’t shed tears. I know that. I didn't even cry at my own father's funeral. Don't ask me why. But I will be sad. She has become part of the family. I remember the day we got her. She was a little black fur ball, mixed Labrador Retriever and Chow, that our son, Matt, who always had a soft spot for animals, had brought home as a “gift” for the family.

“No animals,” I told him. “Final answer!” I reminded him of our recent experience with “Radar” the rabbit. That little critter had chewed on every electrical wire in the house. When any appliance would malfunction, all you had to do was run your finger along the cord until you came to a section of exposed copper wire where the rodent's razor sharp incisors had gnawed through the insulation. (They tell me that rabbits do get addicted to the little jolt of electricity that punks them when they bite into electrical wires. I believe this because an unplugged wire will not be touched by them while the one plugged in will get it every time).

“He can stay the night, but you can take him back tomorrow,” I said. “It’s a SHE,” he said. “Whatever,” I said.

That night, as I lay on the couch, dozing in front of the television… I felt the tread of puppy feet on my stomach. Then the little fuzzball spayed herself on my chest and closed her eyes as if to help me nap. A few strokes of her thick fur and I admit I was a tad smitten.

When she was a puppy, she looked for all the world like a black bear cub. Her big thing was see a crack in the door and bolt for freedom. She was a flash of black fur, hurtling across an open field, galloping for the great beyond. It would take hours of combing the neighborhood, calling her name (which she completely ignored), asking strangers if they had seen her. Finally we would find her, resting on someone’s lawn, her black tongue lolling to one side. Or she would be back at the house, on the front porch, staring up at the door. Today, I left the front gate open while I went to the mailbox and she didn't even notice.

As Sumo grew, it became apparent that her demeanor would be placid and docile. On walks through the neighborhood, she would guppy up to other dogs, expecting a warm reception. When they growled or barked at her, she would run in terror for the safety of the space between my feet. Smaller dogs would send her leaping into my arms. She was no guard dog. But if someone came on the property, Sumo would bark once. That’s it….just one loud, throaty “Rowlf!” After that you were on your own. I didn’t mind. I could never stand yappy dogs.

You know, except for the possible exception of Dr. Jack Kervorkian, we think it immoral to euthanize humans. This despite the fact that it may actually be a kindness in some cases. But we have no problem excercising our sovereignty over animals in this regard. I mean, after all, we buy them. We separate them from their siblings and their mother and we presume to own them. Their servitude is to give us loyalty and love. And this they do in a fashion that is superior, or so it often seems, to the capacity of most humans. Of course, Sumo excelled at this.

One week I had the flu. Toward the end of the ordeal, I was feeling bored and decided to teach her a trick. Let me just say this about Sumo’s intellect. She is not the sharpest sled dog in the Yukon. She knew the command, “Sit”. She had some retriever blood in her, but I think not much. All I could get out of her was a blank stare when I tried to get her to perform that maneuver. Besides, confined to the house I had little space in which to toss a stick.

So I invented a completely new trick. I trained Sumo to “go around”. The house we lived in then had a wall between the kitchen and the living room. I held a doggie treat just out of muzzle reach and, in an authoritative voice, I commanded “Go around!.” Blank stare. I uttered the command again and again, running around the room divider myself until she finally followed me. “Good dog!” (pat pat, scratch scratch). I fed her 10 dog biscuits before she finally figured out that to claim the prize, all she had to do was trot around the room divider. She never forgot the trick. I think that if I got her tired old bones into the kitchen and told her to “Go around”, she would find something to circumnavigate and slowly, with measured steps, make a circle around it and come back to me for some form of approval. Never thought I would say it. But I will miss you, old girl. You were a good, good dog.

Along Came Television

2006-10-18T12:07:00.000-04:00

I was born in 1947 and we didn’t get our first television until 1958. You see, Dad was a rabid fan of University of Tennessee football. And perhaps the biggest game of the year -- The Vols and the Alabama Crimson Tide – was coming up and, wonder of wonders, it was to be on television! But, alas, we had none. But that was no problem to one of the greatest impulse buyers of all time. Dad left the house that Saturday morning and came back home with a large Admiral TV in the trunk of the family sedan.
I know now what must have been going through his mind that day. I know because I inherited his passion for UT football. As he was driving to the furniture store the day of the game--- The cost of an Admiral TV set - $285.00. That was nearly a month’s salary! Ah, but the miracle of watching the Vols play on live TV - priceless! .
My sister and I waited while Dad hooked everything up. An aluminum antenna was rigged to a wobbly pole just outside the living room window. Later it would be strapped to the chimney and work much better. But as it was we could pick up all of the three available channels, even though two of them were a little snowy.
We sat cross-legged on the living room floor, mesmerized by a show called “Sea Hunt” which starred Lloyd Bridges in a series of undersea adventures. We stared in wonder as the scuba diver swished through the water. We listened to the endless audio track of underwater breathing with the occasional voice over of Lloyd Bridges feeding us the plot. There wasn’t much of a plot, really, but we didn’t care. We were hypnotized by the grainy, black and white images and would have probably stared at a test pattern if nothing else was on.
On one of the channels, we found a show called “Robot Monster” where a guy dressed in an ape suit with a goldfish bowl on his head --- “RoMan”, he was called --- ran around trying to kill the last survivors of a nuclear war. I thought this was art of a high nature. But right in the middle of this high drama, Dad came in to change the channel and get ready for the game. I would later learn that this was the first year that the legendary Bear Bryant coached Bama. Tennessee won the game by 14 points. All was well with the world.
The television and I would spend much more time together that year. I would watch “Highway Patrol” with the round-faced Broderick Crawford as the fearless Dan Matthews. Then there was “One step Beyond”, hosted by John Newland, the man with the world’s spookiest eyes. There was also “Cheyenne”, “Your Hit Parade”, and “Annie Oakley”. There was Tommy Reddick as the first of Lassie’s many friends, Jock Mahoney as “The Range Rider”, and Andy Devine yowling “Hey, Wild Bill…Wait for me!” in his odd, high voice. There was a whole world in vicarious adventure which came packaged in snowy black and white, 14 inches across, and sponsored by brand names which still sound like poetry to me. I loved it all.
But I am glad that television came relatively late to the Bowen household.
I am, when you stop to thinkof it, a member of a fairly select group. The final handful of folks who learned to read and write before having TV infect their consciousness. In the last 30 years television has changed. It is no longer squeaky clean. (In the late fifties and early sixties the network censors depicted married folks as sleeping in twin beds, for crying out loud!) These days television strains to find new ways to be shocking, which the industry considers synonymous with entertaining. I am convinced that you could do worse than to strip your television’s electrical plug wire, wrap it around a large nail, and stick it back into the wall and see what blows and how far. But you won’t do that and neither will I. But, sooner or later, there will be another hurricane, or ice storm, that will knock out the power. And once again we will have the opportunity to remember the joy of simple conversation and perhaps find the stories that were there all along in books.

Finally, the lakes are full

2005-12-09T21:23:00.000-05:00

finally, the lakes around here are full. a month ago they were talking about outlawing showers. you could already get arrested for washing your car or watering your lawn on the wrong day. but thanks to a few days of steady wet stuff, we are off the drought hook.
you never think about water until it gets to be in short supply. a lot of things are like that, aren't they. like that joni mitchell song, "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot". i think the real title is "Big Yellow Taxi". anyway, she sings, "don't it always seem to go, you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone"
we search for the elusive and, true to form, it eludes us. When all along, what we need is in our hands. things that make you say, "hmmmmm".