Pipestone Promises

Pipestone Promises

One of my best friends has attained a rather exalted rank in the Boy Scouts of America of late. This is as an adult, so I'm not talking actual Boy Scout ranks here. He's become a commissioner in the organization. Basically, he's a leader of a group of troops. In his case I think it's five troops. Before accepting the new position, he was a Scout Master; before that, a Cub Master. This progression is understandable if you knew the fellow. First, he had a son who was interested in the Boy Scouts, so he helped him along by taking leadership roles in the various Scout organizations as his son aged and worked his way through the ranks. Second, he has a difficult time saying “no” to anyone who presents a need that he feels he can accommodate. And third, he badly wanted to be a Scout when he was young and he was not allowed to become one. So he was, I think, living a bit vicariously as a Scout through his son.

I was happy to see him thus able to be a Boy Scout, even if it was second-hand, and he told me on many occasions how much fun he was having doing it.

I was a Scout as a youngster and seeing him engaged in this pursuit and hearing his descriptions of his adventures on camping trips brought back many memories of my own.

Let me share one with you.

The highlight of the year for any Boy Scout, at least back in the very late '50's and very early '60's when I was a member, was summer camp. This week-long camp was an event that was dreamed about, planned on and prepared for during the entire year. Money was saved, equipment was bought or repaired, family vacations were moved to accommodate the camp and skills were learned and honed in preparation for it. It was the high point in a Scout's year.

The summer camp I attended while I was a scout was named Camp Tuscazoar. It was named after the Tuscarawas River and the village of Zoar, both of which were nearby. This was a large, permanent camp which accommodated hundreds of Scouts per week over most of the summer. It has a long history since its inception in 1920 and its naming in 1925. It had several permanent buildings in the camp including the mess hall, the nature lodge, Hoover Lodge (named after the man who donated the first 65 1/2 acres for the camp), Dan Beard Lodge, the trading post, maintenance building, headquarters and several other ones. It also had a full-size swimming pool, rifle range, archery range, many miles of trails and primitive campsites and numerous other venues for Scouts to utilize. There were also a number of campsites for the visiting Boy Scout Troops, both with canvas 4-man tents and with Adirondack cabins (small cabins open on one side).

Tuscazoar was highly regarded for its comprehensive camping program, its experienced leaders and the beauty of its locale. But its most stellar characteristic was the award it bestowed upon its honor campers. This award was called the Pipestone Honors Award. This award was a piece of pipestone rock, hung on a leather thong and worn on the Boy Scout uniform over the right pocket. The pipestone was brought in from Pipestone, Minnesota in slabs, sawed into appropriately sized pieces and particular symbols were engraved in each piece before a hole was drilled in the top of each piece and a leather thong attached. The color of the pipestone varied from a darkish-tan to an almost purplish brown. Each award was different than the others, so what you got was unique.

Pipestone was carved and used to make peace pipes by Native Americans in the old days.

The pipestone was awarded to campers who had met certain requirements during their weekly tenure in the camp. There were camping, swimming, nature, Boy Scout advancement and other requirements necessary for qualification. For first-year campers, the requirements were fairly easy. For each subsequent year that the Scout attended the camp, the requirements became more difficult. This progression of difficulty continued until the last award was offered, which was the fifth year. The requirements were stringent and had to be met to qualify for the award. There were no pipestone “gimmes” handed out.

If you qualified for the award that year, you turned in your pipestone from the previous year and, after a ceremony, were awarded a new stone with an additional symbol carved on it. So the first year you got a stone with a single symbol on it and, if you attended that camp for five years and got the award each year, you ended up with an impressive piece of pipestone with five symbols carved in it. The symbols, in order of year were: the outline of a man standing and holding a stick above his head, a campfire, a tepee, a flower blossom and an Indian arrowhead. Each symbol was tied to a moral lesson which was taught at the appropriate award bestowal ceremony at the end of the week.

Becoming a fifth-year pipestone winner was considered a great honor. It was a much-sought-after award and was highly treasured above many other awards a Scout could earn, possibly only second to the Eagle badge itself. It was also considered an indication of manhood. The progression of these awards paralleled the maturation of the Scout, as he grew from the age of 12 or so until 17. A fifth-year pipestone winner was, in many respects, a man, at least in the eyes of his younger brethren in the troop.

On your first year camping at Tuscazoar, if you had been diligent, had worked hard and had performed all the tasks necessary to qualify for the pipestone, this is what happened:

The awarding of the pipestone honor award always occurred on Friday night during your week at camp. After supper, the Scouts who had qualified were sequestered in a separate area away from the rest of the troop and told to keep quiet and to think on the accomplishments they had achieved during the week. When dusk was approaching they were lined up by a leader and led to a circular clearing in the woods they had not seen before. It was called the pick-up circle, but the boys did not know it by that name yet. They were seated on the ground facing an already burning campfire, told to cross their legs, fold their arms on their chest and not to speak. The leaders then left the boys alone.

It was quiet. The night had, by then, fallen and it was dark. The only sounds were the snapping of the logs in the fire as they were burned, the distant croaking of frogs in the marshy spots of the camp and possibly the quiet whisper of wind in the treetops. This quiet waiting went on for long, long minutes – perhaps even a half-hour or longer. Some of the boys may have even got drowsy, sitting quietly and waiting. Then, way off in the distance, a drum was heard. It sounded like a BIG drum. The drum was beating in a certain rhythm – a loud beat followed by three lighter beats. BOOM, boom, boom, boom. BOOM, boom, boom, boom. BOOM, boom, boom, boom. The drum beats slowly became louder and louder until it seemed the drum had to become visible, it had to be very, very near. Then... silence.

The drums suddenly stopped. I think a lot of the boy's hearts skipped a beat when that happened. It was sudden, startling and unexpected. They sat there waiting for whatever was supposed to happen next.

The tension was excruciating.

Suddenly, behind the fire, an Indian appeared. He wasn't there... then... he was. It was unnerving. His fierce gaze slowly passed over all of the boys – back and forth, back and forth. He suddenly barked several unintelligible words and threw a powder into the fire. A huge flare of colored flame shot up, a large cloud of smoke arose and... CRACK, CRACK, CRACK... about 20 intensely-bright, red railroad flares erupted on all sides of the group the Scouts were sitting in. Each flare was held by an Indian brave.

Most of the boys were frightened and shocked. They had no idea what was going to happen. They stared at the sudden appearance of the Indians, their eyes wide with alarm.

The Indian's bodies were uniformly colored with a reddish paint, they wore loincloths and moccasins, had black hair in Indian braids and their faces were covered in warpaint. They had feathers in their headbands.

The Indians roughly pulled the boys onto their feet, lined them up and began to run them down a trail, keeping them moving, keeping their voices silent, having them keep their eyes fixed to the boy ahead of them, leading them down a trail to an unknown destination.

After many long minutes of running and stumbling in the dark, being prodded and pushed by very intimidating-looking savages carrying their hissing, spitting flares, the boys at last approached a campfire circle deep in the woods. They were arranged into an arc facing this campfire, made to again fold their arms in front of them and were ordered to keep perfectly still and perfectly silent. The Indians moved constantly behind the boys, straightening the ones who were drooping, shaking the ones who weren't keeping still. Their hands were not gentle.

All was silent except for the crackling of the fire.

Inside the circle of the campfire were three main figures. The first was an Indian brave standing still as a stone holding a rod high above his head, the symbol of the first year painted on his chest. He would maintain this posture for the entire ceremony.

To this day I do not know how he did it.

The second was the Indian Medicine Man, his face entirely black except for a white skull painted on top the black. His fierce eyes glared at the boys. The third figure was the Chief with buckskin clothing and a full Indian headdress and war paint.

He was holding a human skull in his hands.

Each boy was led by two braves into the circle separately. They first were required by the Medicine Man to drink a bitter liquid from a mussel shell placed at their lips. There was no choice about this. You drank. You then were led to face the Chief. He held the skull in front of you and he gestured you to look into the eyes of the skull. As you looked, a light came on in the skull and there was a word written there. This was your “secret” word which you needed to memorize and repeat the next year at camp to receive your next award. You were then returned to the silent arc of fellow Scouts facing the fire.

After all the boys had their turn in the ring and had then been returned to the group, the Chief bade you all to sit and to finally relax. He then gave the moral lesson that was the first of five given to honor campers, one per year. After which, you were escorted back to the main part of the camp by the Indians, more cordially this time. You then made you way quietly back to your own troop's campsite where you bedded down for the few short hours before dawn. You held your pipestone award tightly as you fell asleep. It had been tough meeting the requirements for it and even tougher going through the ceremony. You'd earned it.

My friend also earned his pipestone awards – all five of them. He earned them as an adult Scoutmaster by leading his son and the rest of his troop for their weeks of summer camp. He worked diligently at those camps for five summers shepherding the boys to and from all the activities they needed to attend during the week, answering their questions and concerns, instructing and informing and feeding their native inquisitiveness.

Being a leader.

He performed these tasks efficiently and professionally despite the sciatica which was wracking his lower back.

He earned his awards too, following a possibly more difficult trail as an adult than I followed as a young man.

I salute him for his diligence, his steadfastness, his moral code and his ability to do something a lot of the rest of us would have a hard time doing.

Or couldn't do at all.

The world is a better place for having men like my friend and the next generation will benefit from his labors.

Kudos to you, my friend. Your efforts were not unnoticed.

Mama Mia

Mama Mia

I was talking to my brother on the phone last week and during the conversation he said to me, “Do you know what day this is?”

I checked out the calendar that was hanging on the wall. It was August 7. My mind ground its gears for a minute, trying to think, trying to put an occurrence with the date. Nope, nothing came to mind.

“Sorry, bro. Nothing rings a bell. I'm drawing a blank,” I replied.

He said, “It's mom's birthday.”

My mouth dropped open at his announcement. Mom's birthday. Damn. I hadn't thought about that for a long time. But when I thought a bit harder, the date did come back to me. August 7, 1921 was mom's birthday. And dad was born 20 days later, on August 27. Yep, I remembered now. Just needed a bit of a memory jog.

I thanked my brother for reminding me about the date. We chatted on for some time afterwards, but my mind kept returning to the significance of the date.

You might think me callous for forgetting my mother's birthday. I assure you I'm not. I may be forgetful and absent-minded, but not callous, at least not consciously. The dates for my mom's and dad's birthdays are pretty much academic now, anyhow.

They're both gone.

Dad died in 1991 and mom passed away way back in 1972. Bad ticker, which seems to run in the family. She was only 51 years old when she left us and that seems incredibly young to me, now, looking back at it. That was almost 36 years ago. She died 49 days after I got married, so she only had seven weeks to enjoy having a daughter-in-law. I think that might have bothered her the most. She always liked to say that she lived for her kids. And so, by extension, her daughter-in-law. Mom never had any daughters, so she was enjoying the new one she'd gained. Then...

Let me tell you a bit about her. At least the stuff I know. I wish I knew more.

Mom was born, as I stated before, on August 7, 1921, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her first name was Lenora, her mom's name was Ola and her dad's, Mike. Ola's maiden name was Adams and, as I found out only recently, she could trace her ancestors back, if not to the Mayflower, then to one of the boats coming over not long after the Mayflower. And, with a little luck, maybe even to the presidents John and John Qunicy Adams. Mike was born in Italy, in the Calabria district. If you picture Italy as a boot and Sicily as the ball the boot is kicking, Calabria is the toe of the boot. He was a stonemason, but not the “normal” kind of stonemason. He was a stone carver. He was one of the immigrant artisans who carved the flowers and ivy and fancy filigree-work in the granite and marble around the windows and doors of churches. You've probably seen work similar to his. I've heard a lot of his craft can still be seen in a number of Catholic churches in Cleveland. Most of what I know about my grandfather is old memory and hearsay as he passed away in 1953 when I was only six years old.

Mom had a sister named Loretta who was born several years after her. We all called her Let or Letty. Sometime in their childhood the family moved to Cleveland, then to Millersburg, Ohio, in Amish country. As a young woman, mom worked in a funeral home in that town, cleaning the funeral home, ironing the undertaker's shirts, and performing other house-keeper type tasks assigned to her. She said her pay was $1 a week. That'd be back in the early '30's perhaps? I believe she also ran a restaurant some time in the “old” days.

She never learned to drive.

I actually know very little about her early life. I wish she was still here so I could ask, but, of course, that's not possible now. I just look at the old photo albums and do a lot of conjecturing.

Dad and mom were married on June 14, 1946 – Flag Day. This was not long after dad returned from Italy (imagine!) where he fought in World War Two. I know nothing of the courtship.

I am embarrassed at my ignorance of my parents lives. It might be because of memory loss, but it's more likely that I never really knew much about it. My folks, as far as I can recall, really didn't talk about their past very much. At least to us kids.

I was born in '47 almost exactly nine months after their marriage. My brother Gary came along in '50 and my brother Chuck in '55. I guess you could say we had pretty normal lives. Dad worked in a factory most of his life as an electrician and did a lot of moonlighting wiring houses after his shift at the factory was over. We didn't see him very much. Mom was a stay-at-home housewife and mother which was exactly what she wanted to be and seemed to be perfectly adapted for. There wasn't a whole lot of money around, but we made do pretty well. Us boys had fairly normal childhoods. All three of us were in the Boy Scouts, two attaining Eagle rank. All graduated from high school, two attended college. My brother Gary and myself were members of the U.S. Armed forces during the Vietnam era, Navy and Air Force respectively. Chuck got lucky as he was younger and “missed” out on all the military stuff. My brothers both ended up in California when they “left the nest”.

It didn't seem so at the time, but our family was probably very close to the statistical norm. We had dogs for pets, had nice Christmases, had paper routes and got part-time jobs as soon as we were able so as to have some “cash in hand”. We then bought 2-wheel and 4-wheel vehicles about as soon as we had the money scraped up and became mobile. Mom and dad both smoked and two of us kids picked up the habit. Smoking was very widespread in those days and didn't have the stigma attached like it does now.

It sure wasn't good for any of us, however.

Mom suffered a lot when my brother and I were in the military. She was a worrier, and us being away like that, especially when we were overseas, worried her even more. I remember her taking “nerve” pills that were prescribed by her doctor. I never asked what they were and she never told me. Perhaps she was sicker than I knew? She was a good cook, loved to bake and the family, when we were around, always sat at the table for her meals. A lot of the meals were Italian. Go figure. She seemed to be always a bit overweight and she continued to be a heavy smoker until the day she died.

I remember her last day.

It was a beautiful fall Saturday morning, bright sunshine and a clear blue sky with the fall foliage colors vivid in the trees around town. I had taken my wife to the beauty parlor for a hairdo and had then driven my Volkswagen to the old family home to say hi. Mom was having chest pains when I got there and thought she needed to go to the doctor. I asked how long she'd been hurting and she said most of the night. I bundled her into my car and headed up towards the emergency room at the hospital, but she insisted on going to the clinic instead. So we went there. She expired about 20 minutes after arriving.

I've always felt guilty about not ignoring her instructions and taking her to the emergency room instead of the clinic, but woefully I listened to her instead of my brain. Plus she'd had a physical exam not that long ago and had got a “clean” bill of health.

But I also have to believe she was in pretty bad shape by the time I arrived on the scene and my choice was probably immaterial by then. If she had called an ambulance that evening? I don't know. Dad was working in West Virginia at that time and only coming home on weekends. Perhaps she didn't want to do that alone or maybe she was worrying about how much the emergency room would cost?

I guess we'll never know.

The trauma of that day haunts me still.

I relived a lot of these memories after the conversation with my brother was finished last week. The events of that time seemed like only a few years ago instead of the 3 1/2 decades they actually were.

So I marked the electronic calendar on my computer with my mom's and my dad's birthdays and made sure I'd notice them the next time they rolled around.

They would have both been 87 this year.

I can't send them a greeting card any more, but, on their birthdays I can take a minute to remember and to wish them well, wherever they may be now.

I think they'll smile at my forgetfulness.

I also think they'll be happy that this old son of theirs will do his best to try to remember their birthdays from now on.

Yeah, I think they'll like that.

It's All Relative

It's All Relative

I guess I've never been very interested in genealogy.

It seemed to me that genealogy mostly consisted of a whole lot of research in musty library files, hours and hours of peering at fuzzy documents retrieved from the Internet and driving around looking at tombstones in creepy cemeteries both near and far. And then, after all that research, gathering and collating histories of people's births, deaths, children, professions, residences, achievements, etc., then drawing up complicated tree-like diagrams of old-time relatives and other semi-boring activities. A lot of work.

Just didn't seem very relevant or very important. At least to me.

Oh sure, I guess you could say genealogy had touched me a couple times in the past. One of my uncles or great-uncles had hired someone or figured out himself when my ancestors (on my father's side) had come to America and from where. It was kinda interesting in a passing sort of way. By the way it was Germany and 1709. Don't you feel better? Also, a number of years ago some group was gathering information on families in the county where I live. They were to have it published in a history of our county and wanted input from as many families in the area as possible. I gathered the data for all of my paternal relatives, from my grandparents down to the children of my generation, wrote this up in a narrative and submitted it to the gathering agency and it was eventually published.

My wife's family had done some genealogical research also and had found some connections to a previous governor of Ohio and a direct link back to Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of “Uncle Tom's Cabin”. One of Harriet's brothers was the direct ancestor of my wife. That was pretty cool.

But, other than that, I'd not been a genealogy buff. At least not until I received an unexpected email from a relative I didn't know I had.

My maternal grandmother (my mom's mom) was one of four children. Her name was Ola and she was the eldest. She had two younger sisters, Dorothy and Pearl, and a brother Etsel, who was the youngest of the siblings. Etsel had two children, Donald and Lorraine. Lorraine is about ten years older than me and was the sender of the email I received a couple of years ago. Turns out that she is my second cousin.

Lorraine was doing some genealogical research and had ran across my name on the Internet. She knew her aunt's (my grandmother) daughter had married a man by that name and she knew the city where that had occurred. So she took a blind stab and sent me an email and asked if I was related to her aunt.

It was a lucky guess.

Anyhow, after I'd acknowledged that she'd contacted the correct person, she sent me another email and asked if I wanted to get reacquainted with her and maybe have a little reunion? She's the last of my mother's generation, if you want to look at it that way, children of my grandmother and her siblings, and she wanted to see me. She actually remembered me from when I was a little kid and my family had traveled to Pittsburgh to see their family for some grown-up reason not shared with the kids. She was a teen at that time. I must have been a bratty kid for her to remember me from all those years ago.

So, after a number of getting-acquainted emails were sent back and forth, my wife and I agreed to meet them at their home near Youngstown, Ohio. We were planning an overnight trip to the casino and dog track in Wheeling, West Virginia anyway, and we figured we could stop at their home and visit with her and her husband John on our way there. A two-birds-with-one-stone kind of deal.

We arrived in their suburb of Youngstown on a sunny Saturday and Lorraine and John came out onto their porch to greet us. When I saw her face and heard her voice I was immediately aware that she was family! The familial resemblance was very apparent and the voice, even through the noticeable western Pennsylvania accent (their previous long-time home), was unmistakably family. She sounded exactly like my mom/grandmother/aunts all rolled together – it was uncanny. And it was great having a “new” relative to talk to and get to know! I'd forgotten somewhat how my mom and her side of the family talked and looked and gestured as they'd been gone a long time. But there was no need to study her and learn her persona. It was already imprinted in my genes and she was as familiar to me as my own reflection in the mirror.

How great was that!

We sat and talked for hours, getting to know each other, reminiscing about family long gone, looking at scrapbooks and photo albums of our relatives. It was a warm, cozy afternoon and my wife and I enjoyed it immensely! Lorraine's mother lives with her and John and she also joined into the conversation from time to time with her memories and anecdotes. For a lady of her advanced age, she was lively, alert and a joy to be around. Her husband John was also quite a character in his own right and it was my great pleasure to meet him and to bond a bit with him, man to man. I like to think he enjoyed my company as much as I certainly enjoyed his.

I know she's my second cousin and all that, but Lorraine and John felt like a favorite aunt and uncle. We clicked and connected on a lot of levels that day. It was a homecoming.

We visited again once or twice more at her home, a couple times at the Wheeling Casino and Racetrack (they're casino and race fans also), and once at my house. I got to meet her daughter Cindy and her new husband Mike, a very nice couple. We shared some meals, some hours and a lot of love.

The last time we were to visit with them they promised my wife and I a treat. They were going to take us to their old stomping grounds, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I hadn't been there since that day long ago when I was a kid, and my wife had never been there. So we accepted and could hardly wait for the day to come around.

On August 4 this year we arrived at their house around 9 o'clock and quickly piled into their car for the journey to Pittsburgh. They took a rambling east-bound route that morning and pointed out to us various places that were important to them, everything from favorite restaurants and places they'd made good buys at garage sales to previous homes and the site of a horrendous airline crash on a mountain outside Pittsburgh. After enjoying the circuitous route and the fascinating travelogue from Lorraine and John, we at last arrived at the Steel City and parked near the Gateway Clipper Landing on the South side of town next to the Monongahela River. We wandered down to the boat dock and spent a pleasant period of time chatting while we waited for our ship to return to the pier from a previous cruise. Finally our ship, the Keystone Belle, arrived and we boarded for our one-hour sight-seeing cruise. I kept my camera busy taking shots as the ship cruised up the Monongahela, then turned and headed down that river and into the Ohio River. It then turned up the Allegheny for a while, then turned and made its way back to the dock via the Ohio and Monongahela again. We saw many sights on the cruise including the incline railroads going up Mt. Washington, the skyscrapers of the downtown, PNC Park where the Pirates play, Heinz Field where the Steelers play, numerous bridges of varying ages and other fascinating sights along the Three Rivers. The narrator on the ship was interesting and informative. John and Lorraine augmented the narrator with many of their own stories and recollections about the sights that were passing by during the trip.

I took lots of pictures!

After returning to the dock we walked over to a stop on the 'T', the Pittsburgh subway, and caught a train for downtown. It was only a few minutes ride, it was free as we were all “seniors” and it brought us within a few blocks of the restaurant John and Lorraine wanted to take us to, The Original Oyster House. This bar and restaurant is the oldest in Pittsburgh and was founded in 1870. It's an unpretentious place with a predominantly seafood menu with absolutely enormous fish sandwiches. I ordered a regular fish sandwich, which is called a Jumbo and it was huge. John ordered the MONSTER fish sandwich (he's a self-admitted addict for them) and it dwarfed mine! Amazing! We enjoyed our lunches (we were HUNGRY) and soon were back on the busy streets of Pittsburgh. John and Lorraine guided us around some of the city, pointing out sights and places of their younger days when they worked there and nearby. After some time walking around downtown we again caught the 'T' and rode back to the “south side” where our car was parked. But before leaving, we rode the funicular up to the top of Mt. Washington to see the sights and take some more pictures. It's a great place to take in the whole downtown Pittsburgh vista and the ride up the steeply inclined railroad was lots of fun!

(John and Judy were not particular fans of the vertiginous railroad!)

After returning to the car, John drove another roundabout way back toward their home, visiting several other communities in Pennsylvania where he and Lorraine had lived and worked. We also visited a cemetery where Lorraine's brother Don and her father Etsel were laid to rest.

On our return to their home, Lorraine served us a homemade raisin and nut cake that was rich and dense and scrumptious! She was even kind enough to cut some slices for us to take home.

After bidding a fond farewell to our gracious hosts, my wife and I hit the road home.

It was quite interesting seeing the actual places where my family had lived, worked and spent their lives. It added depth and a sense of place to my memory of my family and it made some of the dry genealogy come vividly alive.

Am I now a fan of genealogy?

More than I was before. Perhaps.

But I do know this. If I'm ever in need of information concerning the maternal side of my family, I definitely know where to go and who to talk to!

And I'm thankful for the privilege and joy of a “new” cousin.

Even if she is a Steeler fan!

(My apologies to John and Lorraine for any inconsistencies in my narrative or any errors in names, dates or places. My intention was true even if my memory may have been faulty.)

Two Over Easy, Homefries, Bacon and Laura, Please?

Two Over Easy, Home-fries, Bacon and Laura, Please?

The wife and I have to travel about 12 miles, one way, to see our doctor. No, we don't live out in the boondocks. We live in a small city and there are lots of doctors here in town. But years ago, when I worked somewhere else, my health plan didn't include any of the doctors in my hometown. But it did include the ones in the small town 12 miles away, so we started getting our health care there. We still do, even though my new job would allow us to change. By now we're comfortable with our doctor and his clinic and associated hospital. So we've stayed with him.

Besides which, I think he's a pretty good doc!

Due to some ongoing health concerns for my wife and myself, we find ourselves traveling to the clinic in that small town for fairly frequent blood tests. We usually try to have the blood drawn on Saturdays, as I work second shift and the wife works first during the week, and Saturday's a day we both can travel together. We usually make a morning of it by going out for breakfast after letting the lab technicians draw off their quota of our red stuff. We followed this now-familiar routine last weekend.

The blood test this time was for my wife, so I was just along for the ride. And the breakfast of course. We occasionally vary the restaurants we eat at, but generally go to a particular one.

Let me tell you about it.

The restaurant in question sits very close to the center of the little town where our doctor practices. It is not a pretentious place; it's very low key. The establishment is in a long, narrow room with booths along the right side and a counter with stools along the left. Behind the counter is the grill where the short-order cook runs the show. He's a skinny dude, lightly bearded, with an ever present baseball cap on his head. He is a quite capable grillman. We're always fascinated by his expertise with the knife and spatula, and his skill handling the volume of orders he's presented with.

Did I mention that this little restaurant is always busy? Well, it is, at least on Saturday mornings when we're usually there. We even have to take stools from time to time and sit at the counter, as the booths fill up fast. Some of the breakfast food is prepared in a small kitchen in the rear of the building, such as the sausage gravy and the oatmeal. They also pre-shred and pre-cook the mountains of home-fried potatoes which are then browned on the grill up front.

The majority of the food, however, is cooked on the grill.

The food is good, the coffee is hot and the service is, if not the fastest, very entertaining.

I think I mentioned that this restaurant is in a small town? Being such, a lot – might I even say most – of the customers are locals. A lot of them know each other. And the waitresses pretty much know most of the customers. So there's a lot of conversation and joking around going on between the waitresses and the customers. Some mornings we've been there it's been quite a circus.

Which brings us to the staff. I mentioned the short-order chef – the dude with the ball cap? Along with him there's a couple of older ladies who mainly take care of the kitchen in the rear of the restaurant, a girl who busses the tables and what looks to be the short-order cook's wife, who helps with plating, toast and other supporting cook stuff. Then there's Mona and Laura who are the primary waitresses in the restaurant.

Mona is 30-ish, slim, dark-haired, friendly and very good at her job.

Laura is... how do I say this? Pretty? Beautiful? Cute? A knockout? Yep... all of that. The wife and I have watched her grow up over the years as customers of the establishment. She was a cutie-pie teenager when we first noticed her, learning the ropes and having a ball being a waitress. She has since, over the last 6 or 7 years, grown into an astonishingly beautiful woman. About five foot, four inches tall or thereabouts, honey-blond hair, very clear skin, small upturned nose and beautiful clear eyes. Her body is almost swimsuit-model perfect, and she has developed a very substantial set of... well, let's say she is very, very well endowed.

Very well indeed!

Laura was on duty last Saturday when we walked into the busy restaurant. The booths were full so we took two stools at the counter and began watching the “show” that was going on, as she and Mona were flying around the room, taking orders, pouring coffees, delivering plates and wise-cracking with all and sundry in the room. Mona was her usual pleasant self, competent, friendly and easy on the eyes. But Laura?

Wow!

That particular day she had on the shortest, tightest pair of shorts I believe I've ever seen. Her top was a green, scoop-neck, tee-shirt kinda thing advertising both the restaurant's name and her spectacularly substantial rack!

Now you have to understand that I was there with my wife, Laura is much, much younger than I am and I was in town to assist in my poor wife getting a blood test, for Pete's sake. But... I was aware, to the millimeter, exactly how low her shirt was cut and exactly how short her shorts were. As was every red-blooded man in the restaurant, I'll wager. And every time Laura took a step I was aware of the delicious bouncing that was evident for anyone with eyes.

I tried to maintain my nonchalance, my indifference, but it was undoubtedly evident that I was enjoying the show. My wife nudged me sometime during the ongoing performance and said with a grin, “Oh, you noticed? I thought maybe you missed it.”

I told her that I was old but not dead!

She grinned again and said, “And I thought you liked this place for its eggs!”

She's a good sport!

We ate our breakfasts and enjoyed the show. And I took a mental picture of Laura to carry out with me, which I could retrieve and peruse on the proverbial rainy day.

She's a hell of a cutie!

If you're curious, take a drive down Ohio Route 57 toward the southern end. Find a restaurant near the center of the little town that sits there. Go in. Look around.

If she's working that day, you'll know it.

Don't forget the sausage gravy on your biscuits!

Pilgrimage

Pilgrimage

I went on a pilgrimage in mid-June of this year. I journeyed across many miles of this country on a southbound trek to find myself in the real-life counterpart of the fictional home of a man who doesn't exist. I walked the streets and drove the roads that he walked and drove upon, visited landmarks and towns whose names were almost as familiar to me as my own hometown. I felt the hot, humid air of this man's home territory brush across my sweating brow and enjoyed the spicy, complicated tastes of his favorite foods. I heard the sounds of Zydeco and other Cajun music and was enchanted by the accents of the people who were the models for this man and his friends. My eyes experienced the actual places and sights my man had lived in and had derived his tortured philosophies from. I even stood on the very banks of the Bayou Teche which runs through his hometown and which figures in the fascinating history of this area, as well as the always-evolving history of this remarkable character.

Forgive the rambling first paragraph. I've just finished the 17^th installment of a series of novels about a certain Cajun detective - a fellow named Dave Robicheaux. All of which were written by a certifiable genius named James Lee Burke. He's been called a national treasure by more than one person and I'd like to add my endorsement to that description. And I wish, as I always do after finishing one of James' Robicheaux books, that he had written another 17 in addition to the ones already published.

I've never been disappointed with any of the books in this series. The stories have all been well-crafted, the characters vivid and believable and the way Mr. Burke puts words together is, quite simply, incredible. If you can't select a couple of dozen passages from any of his books that you want to cut out, put a frame around and hang on your wall, you don't have a soul in your body. If you can read his books without shaking your head in pure joy at his crystal clear descriptions and his amazingly vivid characters, you're a barbarian. I find tears gathering in my eyes over and over again when I read the tortured, conflicted but always human thoughts of his characters as they cope with the hands that life keeps dealing to them.

My envy of James' mastery of the written word is sometimes pitiful to see. If I could write a solitary paragraph that would elicit the same amount of emotion that one of his paragraphs does in me, I'd quit my day job and start writing tomorrow.

As I mentioned earlier, my wife and I vacationed in Louisiana last month and while there we made a point of spending a few days in western Louisiana, in Cajun country, specifically in New Iberia and environs. That's Mr. Burke's home (along with Missoula, Montana these days) as well as the home for his famous Cajun detective. In my correspondence with the husband-and-wife owners of the bed & breakfast where we stayed in New Iberia, after I stated my addiction to James Lee's books, specifically his Robicheaux books, I was told to “be assured that Dave Robicheax was alive and well in New Iberia!” I was enchanted by the remark and even more enchanted with the owners of the B&B when we met them. The husband was a Shelby Foote lookalike and a dyed-in-the-wool Southern gentleman who's hospitality was as genuine as his smile. His wife was an absolute dynamo of sweetness and vitality who made it a point to go way, way, way out of her way to make two tired Ohio travelers feel like we had come home. Believe it or not, a major highlight of our trip was the couple of hours we spent just talking to our hosts in their fascinating home. The Estorge-Norton B&B in New Iberia is NOT to be missed if you're traveling in the area. I've never been hugged upon departure from any hosts in any lodging establishments before in any of our travels.

We were there.

I felt a sense of deja-vu upon driving around the town of New Iberia and the neighboring towns. Jeanerette. Loreauville. St. Martinville. Abbeville. Lafayette. Even old New Orleans, the Big Sleazy itself. I'd been there with Robicheaux in many of James Lee's books. Talked to bad guys and good guys, eaten at their restaurants, drove their back roads next to bayous and along sugar cane fields and levees. I rode in a small boat through a swamp that was smack-on identical to the one described out beyond Dave Robicheaux's bait shop. It was all there, right outside my car windows, right in front of my eyeballs.

I loved it!

It was, in a lot of ways, like stepping inside one of his novels. Almost everywhere you looked there was a place that you'd “seen” before. That was sooooo cool!

But I was glad it was the quietly mundane real place rather than the one in the books. Those fictional places were lots darker, with lots more evil and lots more bad guys than the real place had. At least I hoped that was the truth.

My wife and I were sitting in a restaurant one day while we were in the western Louisiana area, eating our lunches, when a uniformed deputy sheriff came in and sat down with his wife (girlfriend?) and ate his meal at the next table. I kept glancing over at him, taking in the uniform, thinking to myself that he might be one of Robicheaux's compatriots in that world. I could walk over to him and ask him if he knew Dave and might even get a yes!

How cool would that be!

But, of course, he was a REAL deputy sheriff and may have not actually read any of Burke's books. That would have been an embarrassing moment! Besides, he was a St. Martinville Parish Sheriff's Deputy, not Iberia Parish. He wouldn't have known Dave anyhow.

Probably.

So my pilgrimage to the birthplace of one of my favorite literary characters is over. I may never see the ancient live oaks of western Louisiana with their gray beards of Spanish moss again. I may never again feel the hot, salty wind from the south on my face and see the green sugar cane fields ripple with its touch. Even New Orleans itself, with its sweaty old elegance and its wounded extremities may never feel the tread of my Ohio shoes again.

But I can always pick up one of James Lee's books and be back there in a moment. Back where Robicheaux maintains the law and suffers mightily for his endeavors with the demons that haunt his soul. And where the good guys always win over the bad guys but leave scars that fester and weep in the nocturnal dreams of its inhabitants.

And there's always the next book in the series.

I can't wait!