You Can't Get There From Here

You Can't Get There From Here

Along with the bluer skies, the warmer temperatures and the balmier atmosphere of early summer in this part of Ohio, you also start seeing the advent of the heaviest portion of construction season. I know, I know, it shouldn't come as a shock. It happens every year. But it always does. As soon as the weather starts getting nice and you start traveling more on the streets and roads, the orange cones start going up and your moving from hither and yon starts becoming difficult. Sometimes damn near impossible. This year is no exception. In fact, it might even qualify as high water mark in the annals of construction season. It seems that almost everywhere you turn in my town or on nearby highways you run into blocked streets, stripped roads, construction folks with their stop/slow signs on poles and the beep-beep-beep of heavy equipment backing up. Along with slow traffic, missed appointments, dust, noise and barely-contained road rage.

Did we receive a large chunk of Obama's largess recently to finance all this construction? Or is this mostly a scheduling problem and would have occurred without any federal money?

My town looks to be trying to fix or replace almost all of its underground infrastructure at one time. Stripping street surfaces, replacing or repairing sewer mains, water mains and storm mains and “street-scaping” in some areas. In other areas, just digging holes in the road and doing “who knows what”. It also seems that a lot of this work is being done in and near our downtown. Since I only live a small number of blocks from the downtown area, it's affecting us.

A lot.

I walked downtown today to meet my wife for lunch at a local restaurant. I do this most Fridays. I walk from our home to the restaurant and she drives in from her workplace and meets me there. We ride home afterwards together. During my walk, at one of the street corners, I saw the familiar yellowish-orange of a backhoe busy at work. I walked up to the excavation and peered downward into the bowels of the pit. I didn't have a hard-hat on so I wasn't officially part of the fraternity who were working around the area, but they tolerated the occasional rubbernecker who was interested in where his tax dollars were being spent. I was accepted for the moment. As I looked down into the deep excavation I saw a man in a big, vertically oriented pipe doing some task. His hard hat bobbled as he worked. I thought back to what I had observed seven days earlier at the same spot. I had walked past this same hole at this same time last Friday and, for all that I could remember, it was the same guy in the hole doing the same thing. It probably wasn't. But it could have been. Was the construction of whatever underground system they were installing getting any closer to completion? Far be it from me to say. I would venture to guess, though, that it should have been.

And it probably was.

I nodded to the gentleman in the hole, acknowledging his efforts and conveying my studied appreciation of his work and his expertise in whatever the hell he was doing. Who knows? Maybe he might have thought I actually even knew what was going on.

I doubt that also. I didn't have a clue.

I finished my walk and met my wife in the restaurant. We chit-chatted about inconsequential things and we discussed how we were going to drive home from our lunch – what route we would be taking due to the construction. Please be aware that we only lived 4-5 blocks from the restaurant. In a northerly direction. Also be aware that when we left there we went east, south and quite a ways west before finally heading north. Then a bit more east, then north again to get home.

We almost couldn't get there from there!

I just love construction season.

Don't get me wrong. I thoroughly enjoy the aftermath of the roadwork. The smooth road surfaces, the more efficient water flow and sewer flow. I also like the fact that the heavy downpours from rainstorms don't pool up at intersections like they used to. But to achieve these ends...? You gotta put up with the construction. A LOT of construction.

I often joke about how long a freshly-paved city street will stay unmolested by a hungry backhoe in my fair city. I think the longest record that I can remember is about 2-3 weeks. A few years ago they completely stripped one of our main streets all the way down to dirt – no paving materials at all. They then replaced everything that existed under that street – all the services. They then repaved the street with multiple layers of pavement until it was a beautiful stretch of asphalt. Smooth. Firm. Complete. Absolutely better than brand new.

They were digging holes in it almost immediately.

Did they forget something? Did one of the new thingies underground break? Or was it just Murphy, in his infinite wisdom, throwing a monkey-wrench into the works?

Who knows?

I just know that beautiful stretch of Quimby Avenue had a patch on it almost immediately after it reopened subsequent to its construction. What a doggone pity.

I suppose I should be more content. To be thankful for the work that's being done that I'll benefit from. To be more content that the experts are handling the work and they'll be done, more or less, before the snow flies this fall.

Contentment.

Which reminds me...

We're going on vacation next month, the wife and I, and, along with some other things, we're going to be visiting an friend of mine from the old days. I haven't physically seen Al since the fall of 1969 when we were both stationed in the Panama Canal Zone as Air Force weathermen. I was 22 years old then, 170 pounds and pretty fit.

Fast-forward 40 years.

Now, in 2009, you'd like to make a bit of an impression on an old friend when you meet him for the first time in four decades A big impression. You'd like to roll up in a stretch limo, greet him wearing a thousand-dollar suit and bequeath to him a half-dozen of your best selling novels. Hand him a fistful of hundred-dollar Havana cigars, introduce him to your 25-year-old trophy wife and invite him on your private jet for a quick trip to Monaco for a weekend of champagne, gambling and debauchery.

There's only one thing about that scenario.

It. Ain't. Gonna. Happen.

What he is going to see is an 11-year-old Honda roll up in his driveway and an overweight, gray-haired, spectacled dude slide out with his wife of almost 38 years at his side. Shorts, tennis shoes, old golf shirt. And a goofy grin. No published novels. No thousand-dollar suit. No private jet. No cigars. No upcoming debauchery (dammit).

And that's OK.

I'm learning contentment, becoming a student of it. I'm learning to accept the life that I've lived and to see it as the marvelous gift that it is and was, instead of anything that it isn't and wasn't.

To let the not-so-good times go.

Have other people led better lives than I have? No. They've lived different lives, not necessarily better ones. Better is a word that denotes a comparison – better than what? Is a thousand-dollar suit better than my shorts and golf shirt? Is a stretch limo any better than my well-maintained old Honda? Is a smile from a 25-year-old trophy wife any better than a smile from my wife of beau-coup years? I'd say no. In fact, I'd say hell no!

I'm beginning to see what contentment might be all about. Beginning to get the drift of what a contented soul might feel like. Beginning to be comfortable, secure and content about what the past was, what the present is and what the future might be. Not just to rest on my laurels but to realize that what I've accomplished already is well and truly fine. And that what I have not accomplished is also fine. And to finally be content to continue to strive or not, to accept that striving is not a be-all and end-all in itself.

So I'll hoist a beer this weekend in honor of my old friend Al and in anticipation of our quickly approaching reunion. We're coming to see ya real soon, pal, with our lined faces, our crows-feet and our stories of lives well-lived.

Get a pad and pencil ready. There will be a test later!

The Bride Wore Flip-Flops

The Bride Wore Flip-Flops

I suppose I should have paid a little more attention to the wedding announcement when it came in the mail. When I read the part where it said to come casual and to wear flip-flops if you want, I should have realized that it wasn't just another way of saying “just wear casual”. They meant it exactly as it was written. I just didn't believe it at the time.

The wedding was to begin at 1 pm at the Methodist church in Madisonburg, a small suburb a little ways north of my hometown. My wife and I arrived a few minutes after 12:30. It was a sunny Saturday afternoon in this part of Ohio and I begrudged, at least a little, the necessity of attending this wedding for a 2nd cousin. The groom was the youngest son of my cousin Steve Weaver and I knew him to be a good kid – college grad, good job, level-headed. Maybe a bit car crazy, but that was an affliction of his dad's also. I originally thought that maybe we would mail this one in, to “take a rain check”, to just send the card and gift. But then I reconsidered.

He was family and family was important. And I'm very fond of his mom and dad. So we went.

I knew we were at the right place by the vehicle parked next to the door of the church. It was a bright yellow 1940 Ford Deluxe Coupe hot rod. With a life-size Homer Simpson doll hanging out the driver's window seeming to wave at the people arriving, seeming to say, “Welcome! Welcome!” Oh yes, this was definitely the right place.

When we entered the church I finally got it through my thick skull that the invitation we'd received was correct in every detail, especially the part about the footwear. My wife had taken the arm of one of the ushers that were leading us to our pew in the church and the unmistakable sound of “flop, flop, flop” came from his feet. When we looked down – there they were. Brightly-colored flip-flops! They seemed so incongruous with the dressy brown formal wear he had on from his ankles up.

Like swim fins on the feet of an Olympic gymnast.

He wasn't alone, either, as the entire wedding party, including the bride and groom, was attired in flip-flops.

We took our seats and began perusing the program for the wedding ceremonies. It had the customary listing of the organ music being played, the various parts of the wedding ceremony and their sequence, the hymns to be sung and other items. It also had a one-page insert with a short bio of each person in the wedding party. One side started with the bride, Jaimi, and went through the bridesmaids – Jodi, Emily, Carrie, Michelle and the flower girl Gabrielle. The other side was headed by the groom, Andrew, and it listed his groomsmen – Allen, Mark, Christopher and Jack. At the bottom of the “mens” side they listed a wedding participant named Dutchess Weaver.

I need to quote the listing for Dutchess for a special reason. It said, “Dutchess Weaver – Ring Bearer is a perfect lady! She has been the pride and joy of her daddy for the past three years. Like a true lady, however, she will never reveal her biological age. Some would say the two are almost inseparable. Dutchess is honored to be a part of this important day in her Daddy and Mommy's life. She is forever grateful to her Granny Peg and Mommy Jaimi for making her skirt and fleece pillow, respectively, for the day's activities and hopes that there will be MANY photos to commemorate the event. In her spare time, Dutchess enjoys ripping to shreds groundhogs, rabbits, and barking at raccoons, birds and the moon! Her new favorite friend is the skunk!”


After reading the first half of the “bio” for Dutchess I pictured a little flaxen-haired moppet wearing crinolines and flip-flops carrying a pillow with the rings attached who happened to have a unique nickname. Upon further reading I realized that the ring bearer was a dog! And sure enough she was. She even had on a skirt the same color as the bridesmaids dresses when she proudly walked up the aisle!

Before the service got under way they had a tribute to the grandmothers of the bride and groom. They lowered a movie screen behind and to one side of the altar and displayed a montage of photographs of first, my aunt Lorna who was the paternal grandmother, then the bride's grandmother. Both were deceased. They played the song “Holes in the Floor of Heaven” by Steve Wariner during the tribute and there wasn't a dry eye in the church. Even stoic old me had a lump in my throat the size of a grapefruit. Then one of the photos on the screen showed my aunt Lorna during a long-ago Christmas and there was Santa Claus standing next to her. At that moment from the front of the congregation you could plainly hear a little girl's voice excitedly exclaiming, “Santa Claus! Santa Claus!” We all laughed. I'm sure that the grandmothers looking down from heaven laughed also.

The bride's father was in an electric wheelchair and looked to be quite ill. I found out later that he had had brain surgery not that long ago and was still in poor health. I'm not sure whether the surgery was a success or not. Since he couldn't walk his daughter down the aisle as custom dictated, she took a position on his lap and he drove her down the aisle in the wheelchair.

It was a poignant moment and again there were tears in a lot of eyes.

I took a look around the room after we'd all been seated and observed what everyone was wearing and tried to decide whether the suggestion in the invitation to “go casual” had been followed. My wife and I had debated that very point only that morning and we'd settled on dressing semi-casual. She in slacks, a top and a summer-weight jacket; me in Dockers and a decent knit shirt.

We both wore shoes. I don't even think we even own a pair of flip-flops.

As I looked around I could see that we were in the majority as far as dress went. There were some in full suits and dresses, a lot in semi-casual as we were and there were also a fair number in quite casual attire varying from tropical shirts and jeans to full-blown Jimmy Buffet mode with shorts, sandals and garish shirts. And, of course you could see flip-flops here and there. You name the style of dress and it was represented.

After the ceremony and the ritual farewell of the bride and groom as they exited the building, jumped into the sunshine-yellow 1940 Ford and rumbled away, we all adjourned to fellowship hall in the lower level of the church. The groom's mother was from Thailand and had earned a reputation over the years as a fantastic cook. So she, along with a number of her Thai relatives had prepared the food for the reception. My wife and I sat with a couple of my cousins, Esther, Jim and Tim, and got caught up on family news while we ate the exotic hors d'oeuvres. The food was, as expected, outstanding! After a wait that seemed eons long, the bridal party returned from their picture-taking marathon upstairs in the sanctuary and joined us in the fellowship hall. Thankfully, not long after that we lined up for the meal and spent the next period of time oohing and aahing over the tasty Thai cuisine. And messing around with the provided chopsticks which proved hilarious.

Soon our plates were clean, our belts loosened a notch or two, and we leaned back in our chairs to watch the rest of the festivities. First there was the toast given by the best man and the maid of honor to the new Mr. and Mrs. Then there was the cutting of the wedding cake and the subsequent smearing of such all over the faces of the new spouses by their partner. I was amazed at the enthusiasm demonstrated in said smearing! Their faces were absolutely coated with cake and icing. Then it was time for the first dance of the bride and groom as man and wife. Following that dance it was time for another poignant moment to occur. The next dance was to be the one where the groom dances with his mom and the bride with her dad. We saw the wheelchair approach the dance floor and two men assisted the handicapped father and helped him to his feet and into the arms of his daughter where he swayed and danced with her. The song they danced to was, of course, another tear jerker. You could see it was torture for him to do it, but he was determined to not let his daughter down on her special day. We applauded him when he left the floor, again in his chair and looking exhausted but exalted.

My wife and I had some obligations we needed to attend to about then, so we decided it was time to bid our adieus to the post-nuptial festivities. We chatted for a bit with some of my other cousins and the groom's mom and dad on our way to the door, then made our exit.

I was, after some initial misgivings, glad we went. It was fun being out amongst younger people again, the wedding party and their many, many friends. It was also good to see and be around family again, to see your face reflected and echoed in various ways in your cousin's faces, in their gestures, their voices, their lives.

And it was good for my wife and I to see two people get married who were so full of life and so much in love as my second cousin and his new bride. It brought back many good memories.

We wish Andy and Jaimi the most wonderful life imaginable!

Tin Goose Over the Ice

Tin Goose Over the Ice

The morning sun was still red and close to the horizon as I stood by the departure door at the small airport waiting for my name to be called. I was the last on the list to be seated. I'd waited patiently as 6 or 8 of my fellow workers had been called to take their seats on the aircraft. There'd been an pause after the man just before me was called and I was beginning to believe that I would have to take a later flight. Perhaps they'd run out of room? But no, there came the man with the clipboard and he called out my name. He said, “they've just about got your seat attached – you can board now.” I walked across part of the cold, windy airport toward the airplane, the raw wind making my eyes tear up. It was late February. I mulled over the ticket agent's words as I walked toward the airplane - “...got your seat attached...”

And I wondered.

As I approached the aircraft I could see an attendant finishing clamping a small seat in the doorway of the airplane. In the doorway! That was to be my seat? I swallowed a small, sour lump of fear as I approached. I'm a poor flier at best and this flight was to be a first for me from this airport, to the intended destination and in this rather remarkable aircraft.

The time was the late '70's. I was employed by an independent insurance company which was located in my hometown and our boss, the president of the company, had invited all the men in the office to go on an ice fishing trip with him. Of course you couldn't get away with an action like that nowadays. The females in the company would scream and holler and there'd likely be lawyers involved before the dust settled. But in those “unenlightened” days of the Seventies, sexual discrimination was widely practiced and bosses could get away with almost anything.

It was a good time to be a man, I'm ashamed to admit.

Anyhow, all the men were going ice fishing. Including me! I was excited and really looking forward to it. I'd been a fisherman for many years, of course, but all of my previous fishing experiences had been in the warmer months of the year. In fact, this company for which I worked had booked a party boat in the autumn several times in the past and we'd all gone out in Lake Erie perch fishing. (The men, of course.) We'd car-pooled from our inland hometown where the insurance company was located to Port Clinton, Ohio, where the boat was docked. Then the party boat would motor out to a likely spot – the captain knew just where to get us into fish – where we would drop our lines in the water and start hauling up perch. A lot of the time we'd catch two fish at once. We were using Lake Erie spreaders, a two-hook setup, and that allowed you to catch two at at time. By the time we'd finish we'd have a good portion of a garbage can full of fat yellow perch ready to be filleted and eaten. The boss would have the perch professionally cleaned and frozen after the trip and we'd get our fair share at work the following week.

Fresh Lake Erie yellow perch is mighty fine eating! Rolled in corn meal or dipped in beer batter and deep fried it was a meal fit for a king! Add some tangy tartar sauce, some home-cut French fries and a cold beer? Mmmm...!

But this year was proving to be something different. This year we were going to try our luck through the ice. Yes, the boss was taking us guys ice fishing this year.

So there I was, approaching the airplane that was to fly me through the cold Ohio air to the island of Middle Bass out in frozen Lake Erie. And the airplane which was going to do this was old. Really, really old. It was getting a bit long in the tooth even in my father's day. To be honest, it was an antique. And beside being an antique, it was one of the few of its kind still left flying in the world.

I was going to fly in a Ford Tri-Motor.

Ford Tri-Motors were built between 1925 and 1933 and the history of these aircraft is fascinating. They only made 199 of them in their production years and yes, they were made by the Ford Motor Company. They had 3 Wright air-cooled engines for power and the engine gauges on these old birds were attached to the engines themselves and were read by the pilot by simply looking out the windows. They were one of the first all-metal aircraft with aluminum wings and fuselages which were corrugated for strength. They originally were fitted out for 8 passengers, but could be retrofitted to cram in 12. The one I rode in surely was a 12-seater. The rudder and elevators were controlled by mechanically operated cables strung along the outside of the airplane. The Tri-Motor was known as a ruggedly built beast and one of them ended up being quite famous by carrying Admiral Richard E. Byrd on the first flight over the South Pole. They cost $42,000 in 1933 and each of them were affectionately called “The Tin Goose.”

(As of 2008 there are 18 left in the whole world - only 6 of which are flyable.)

But in the late '70's there were more around and I was getting into one of them.

I gingerly took my seat and strapped on my seatbelt. An attendant shut the door and latched it. I noticed that the latch was a simple sliding bolt – exactly the kind I have on the side door of my house. The man sitting next to me looked over at the latch and smiled. He said, “I see they got the door latch fixed.” I asked him what he meant. He said, “last year it was broken and the door just swung in the breeze the whole way over to the island!”

I looked back a the latch. I was glad it was fixed. Very glad!

The pilot fired up the 3 engines and we taxied out to the runway. He did some energetic things with some of the controls up front, cranking and cranking some device, and soon we were off and up. I think he was lowering the flaps. The old bird flew fine – slow and steady through the air, its fat doughnut tires slowly turning in the slipstream, and soon we were landing on the gravel runway of Middle Bass Island. It was a memorable flight in what was undoubtedly a museum piece!

As a side note, I found out a few years later that the Tin Goose I'd flown in had crashed somewhere up around the lake and was too banged up to fix. Scratch another one of this dying breed.

After landing on the island our host picked us up at the airstrip in an extended van and took us out to the lake, where we jumped onto snowmobiles and other stripped down vehicles for our trip out onto the ice. After a run across the ice for a mile or two we came upon what looked like a village of shacks. Each of the shacks were set up to accommodate two men and he dropped a pair of us off at each one. My partner and I entered ours. It was about 8 feet square, plenty of room for two and the stove inside was already lit. It was nice and warm inside! There were two holes cut in the ice already and two fishing lines dangled into the water. Our host had already baited our hooks and we needed only to give them a jiggle to start feeling fish bites. We immediately set to business and soon were pulling up perch. We opened our door after each fish was caught and tossed the catch out onto the ice where they'd soon cool down and stop flopping.

It was turning out to be a great day!

Around about lunch time there was a knock at the door to our shack and, when we opened it, our host stood there and greeted us. He then slid a picnic basket into the shack with our lunch inside – sandwiches, hot chili, fruit, cold drinks and coffee. Very nice.

During the course of the day, when the fishing had slowed a bit, we would occasionally slip out and visit the other guys in their shacks to see how they were doing. I remember that one of the vice-presidents, who we were all fond of, was doing quite well and had a good pile of perch outside his shack. So about every hour one or another of us would sneak over there and steal some of his fish and put them in our piles! He stated later in the evening that he couldn't figure it out. He was catching fish after fish but his pile wasn't getting any bigger! He actually walked around his shack a couple of times to see if the fish had flopped their way somewhere else. We all got a big laugh out of his consternation.

Late in the afternoon our transportation came back and loaded us up for the trek back to the island. We were one of the last parties to be out on the ice fishing that year and there were pools of standing melt-water that we splashed through on the way back in. The sun had really warmed things up that day and it was a bit scary, but we arrived at our host's house unscathed. I was very glad to be back on dry land and I didn't envy our host having to eventually go out on the ice again to retrieve his shacks.

The host's wife cooked all of us a tasty supper and, after eating like starving weasels, we sat around their big table shooting the breeze and talking about the fishing. Soon after the meal was over the table was cleared, the cards and poker chips came out and we played poker until late in the night. Then it was upstairs to bed. Our host lived in an old farmhouse with many bedrooms upstairs and we all fit in somehow.

The next morning, after a full breakfast of bacon, sausage, pancakes, eggs and the works, the owner returned us to the airstrip for our flight back to the mainland. Our plane this time was an Otter, an S.T.O.L (short take-off or landing) airplane produced from 1951 to 1967. It sat 10 – 11 passengers. Apparently the Goose we flew over in on Saturday was down for maintenance. We piled into the Otter and the pilot taxied to the downwind side of the gravel airstrip. When he arrived there he cranked over the rudder and tried to turn the airplane around to face into the wind for its takeoff. Due to the strong wind blowing at the time and the roughness of the gravel airstrip, the airplane didn't want to turn around. So a couple of us passengers jumped out and pushed the tail of the airplane around so it was facing the correct direction. They then jumped back in and we took off. The flight back to the Port Clinton airport was slow and noisy but uneventful and the drive back home the same.

A lot of the men who accompanied me on that trip are gone now. Two of the vice-presidents, Bob Dickason and Tauno Lintala have passed away. Several of the others I've lost contact with over the long years, but rumor has it they're gone also. Two guys, Eric Dulin and Mike Miller, both who were my age are still alive and still work at an insurance company, although it's a different one nowadays, up the road from where we used to work. What's quite remarkable about the group that shared that trip so many years ago is that the president of the company, Ken Rhode, who invited us on that expedition back in the good ol' days and who was in his late 60's back then, is still alive! He celebrated his 100^th birthday just this year and still goes into the office a couple of days a week. Just to keep his hand in, he says. He holds the title of “Director Emeritus” now. I called him up on the phone to congratulate him on his enviable milestone just after his birthday and we chatted for a while. If you didn't know it, you'd guess he hadn't aged a year since the late 70's.

People like to yammer on and on about the good old days, knowing that they weren't that good a lot of the time. Much like today.

But this trip out on the ice was, without a doubt, one of the really good ones.

The blue ice still forms thick and firm on old Erie in the cold Ohio winters and the fat perch still bite willingly on a hooked minnow. Friends still gather to harvest nature's bounty out on the ice and to share fellowship with other's of a kindred spirit.

Let's hope it stays that way for many long years to come.

Affiliations

Affiliations

If someone asked you to describe yourself – right now – how would you respond to them? What would you say?

Would you talk about your physical attributes? How tall you were? Your weight? Your beauty or lack thereof? Or would you mention your lineage, your parents, grandparents, ancestors. How famous your child was. Perhaps you might describe your religious views or the organizations you might belong to – the Masons, the Moose Lodge, the Elks. Or would you meekly say, “I'm no one special.” When you get right down to it and think about it for a while, how would you even begin to list all of the different attributes that constitute you. How long would it take you to describe all of the affiliations that define you?

Take a minute now and think about the myriad of criteria which make up the persona that's reading this message. You.

What the hell am I talking about?

Let me illustrate it this way. There's a good joke that's been making the rounds recently that might clarify what I'm trying to say. It goes something like this:

I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump off. So I ran over and said, “Stop! Don’t do it!” “Why shouldn’t I?” he said.

I said, “Well, there’s so much to live for!”

He said, “Like what?”

I said, “Well…are you religious or atheist?”

He said, “Religious.”

I said, “Me too! Are you Christian or Buddhist?”

He said, “Christian.”

I said, “Me too! Are you Catholic or Protestant?”

He said, “Protestant.”

I said, “Me too! Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?”

He said, “Baptist!”

I said, “Wow! Me too! Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?”

He said, “Baptist Church of God!”

I said, “Me too! Are you original Baptist Church of God, or are you Reformed Baptist Church of God?”

He said, “Reformed Baptist Church of God!”

I said, “Me too! Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915?”

He said, “Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915!”

I said, “Die, heretic scum!” and pushed him off.

Bypassing the religious implications of the above joke, which is a whole other kettle of fish, it demonstrates, at least a little, the concept I'm trying to describe. And that is, we are all, for the most part, the sum of our associations and affiliations. We define who we are by the definitions of the groups to which we belong.

We are exactly what we define ourselves to be.

To illustrate:

I am a man. I am a married man. I am a father. I am a heterosexual. I am an Ohioan. I am an American citizen. I am a veteran. I am employed.

The groups by which we describe ourselves can further be divided into categories. Social, personal, physical, political, religious, educational, geographical, emotional and many others. We also define ourselves by negatives - “I am not this or that.” A lot of categories in which you belong would, by their own definition, preclude your belonging to others. “I am an adult man” would preclude your being a child or adolescent female. It comes with the territory.

Each definition binds us to a mutually group-defined set of characteristics and responses. Some of the groups to which we belong are strict and we cannot change our affiliation with them without great cost and great personal sacrifice. “I am a man” is one of those groups. Others are less rigid and can be changed or modified more easily. “I am a vegetarian” might be one of them. Some ride in the center such as “I am a Republican.” Changing from that group to another might be easy but the ramifications of that change might be difficult. And then there are the ones most easily changed such as “I am a hungry man and I am a thirsty man.” Just eat and drink!

Each of the groups to which you belong also instructs you to act in specific ways, both by the definition of the group and by its customs and peculiarities. A mid-western American is unlikely to take up the practice of cannibalism, at least without a severe mental aberration driving him. A general in the military would not take orders from a private. It would negate the entire history of the military. It would also be unlikely in the extreme to imagine a Catholic nun performing table dances at a nightclub under any circumstances. Or can you picture John Wayne donning a tutu and dancing Swan Lake with the Bolshoi ballet? Or a Russian prima ballerina donning a 10-gallon hat and six-gun and going out to arrest some rustlers?

The reason these examples seem silly is because we see ourselves and others through the filters of affiliation. We define people, and ourselves, by the groups to which they or we belong or to which they or we believe they belong. And, by defining them as such, would be dumbfounded to see them doing something “out of the norm” for their groups. As we would be at least uncomfortable and more likely embarrassed or mortified doing some action proscribed by the groups we are affiliated with.

Each group to which you profess inclusion narrows your choices of actions and adds blinders to the way you perceive the world. If you belong to a specific religion, you might have been instructed that all other forms of religious practice are incorrect and yours is the “one and only” true one, as was illustrated in the earlier joke. You would not be interested in learning about other religions as you would consider them contemptible and perhaps even heretic. If you are of a certain nationality it is easy and acceptable to believe your country is the “best” and all others have flaws that make them undesirable. If you are of a certain age you might be tempted to berate those older - “never trust anyone over 30” - or those younger - “those kids don't know what they're talking about.”

Is this how we wish to carry on with our lives? Walking in lockstep with our fellow group members with our eyes lowered and our mind stagnating?

I think not.

I believe it's time for a bit of self-examination. Time to take a look at the groups to which we profess inclusion and to examine whether we should categorize ourselves as members or whether we should look around a bit. See what the rest of the world is doing in their groups. Realize that we do have choices in most of our membership groups and that being rigidly involved in the ones we belong to now might be limiting our potentials and possibilities.

Do I think we should all take up vegetarianism? Should we all immediately jump political parties and become that what we always despised? Should we all schedule ourselves for “the operation” to see what being the other sex is all about?

Nope.

But perhaps it might be enlightening to “dip our toes” into other groups, other affiliations. Perhaps it would be life-enriching to take a critical look at what's available in other groups and to at least consider the ramifications of change. Maybe it's time to take off our blinders and to remove our filters and actually see what's out there in the big world. Or even to profess our non-inclusion in any groups!

We might all be surprised. We might all be astounded. We might even be tempted!

Anyone interested in joining my fan club?

Chautauqua

Chautauqua

When you travel northeast from my hometown here in northeastern Ohio and head for the small village of Smithville, seven miles away, you will quickly find yourself in farmland. The surface of the earth rolls a little bit but is mostly level and has been farmed for many, many years. My county is a very agricultural one, maybe even the premier agricultural county of Ohio. A lot of corn and soybeans are grown around here along with some wheat, alfalfa and some other forage crops. Apple orchards are common. Two of the big crops grown northeast of my home are pumpkins and potatoes. A large farmer in this part of the county has turned some of his potato acres into a pumpkin farm and he does major business in the fall selling them for jack-o-lantern carving and pumpkin pie making. He also charges admission to his farm for people to walk through the corn mazes he creates every fall. But his primary crop is potatoes and he grows hundreds of acres of them each year.

Near the edge of one of his potato fields, not too far from the village of Smithville, lies a wooded area containing some ravines, a smallish stream, many acres of second-growth timber, briars and brambles and assorted downed trees, grapevine and brush-choked areas. The ground is rough and uneven. There used to be a village street that ran through this area but it was abandoned early in the 1900's and now is almost undetectable. This area is also supposed to contain the hiding place of a very interesting area which dates back to the end of the 19th century.

A place I've been hunting for many years.

Some history of the area might be enlightening:

Between the years of 1899 and 1915 this plot of ground was the location of the Point Breeze Chatauqua. Chautauquas evolved from an institution in Chautauqua, New York, where, in 1873, John Hale Vincent and Lewis Miller proposed to a Methodist Episcopal camp meeting that secular as well as religious instruction might be included in the summer outdoors Sunday-school institute. This institute evolved into an eight-week summer program offering adult courses in the arts, sciences and humanities. Thousands of people attended each year.

Other communities were inspired to form their own local Chautauquas and from 200-300 ended up being formed across the country. These local groups brought authors, explorers, musicians and political leaders to lecture and to entertain.

Point Breeze was one of those local Chautauquas. It was formed in 1899 as a 10-day event which was so successful on its initial year that it moved to a 16-day format the following year. Those 16 days encompassed 3 weekends. This local chatauqua had many important people lecture and entertain during its 17-year run including William Jennings Bryan, who gave his famous “Prince of Peace” oration, John R. Clarke – silver-tongued Irish orator, Fredrick A. Cook of North Pole fame, Ohio's governor Myron T. Herrick, Cy Young and George Sisler – baseball players, the Illinois Glee Club and many other important people and groups of the day. Admission was 10 – 15 cents.

From its beginning, the religious feature was stressed. Sunday morning worship services were held on the campgrounds for those who had traveled to and camped for the 16-day event each year. On “big” Sundays it's said you could count a thousand buggies parked in nearby fields which had brought the visitors to enjoy the music and the lectures. At the same time, several hacks brought people from Madisonburg off the Cleveland and Southwestern Interurban trollies and from Weilersville from the Pennsylvania trains.

Point Breeze stressed lectures, music and the outdoor life. It flourished in the days before radio and television when it was enjoyable to be outdoors on a pleasant summer afternoon or evening. Many families camped out on the chautauqua grounds, enjoying the outdoor life, the companionship of like-minded other folks along with the education and entertainment of the scheduled events. Baseball games were also common during the run of the chautauqua.

One of the greatest reasons that Point Breeze folded after its 1916 meeting was probably the automobile. Mobility made it possible to travel greater distances for entertainment of the same sort in Canton, Cleveland and Akron. Also, in 1916 the United States was gearing up to enter World War I which it did the following year.

After the demise of the chautauqua the ground was more-or-less abandoned. The years took their toll and the area is now virtually impassible.

I had heard the story of the Point Breeze Chautauqua back when I was getting into the hobby of metal detecting. I thought then that it might be a great place to hunt for early coins, so I took a number of trips out to that area. The part of the land that's still wooded is extremely rough with downed timber, many brushy patches massively overgrown with heavily-thorned briars and dense undergrowth. It's difficult to even get into the area now, let alone being able to swing a metal detector. I've visited this patch of woods a dozen times over the years and each trip was a difficult endeavor usually resulting in numerous bloody cuts and skin rips from the giant thornbushes. I found a few rusty horseshoes, many brass shotgun shell bases from the hunters in the woods over the years but not much else. I've poured over the maps of the area and read all I could about the chautauqua.

And I've dreamed about it. A lot.

I can just picture several thousand people wandering around in those woods, camping, playing baseball, sitting and listening to famous people and musicians.

And losing things. Coins, jewelry, all kinds of metallic items. Also remember that during that time period gold and silver were the coin of the realm. Read that once more. Gold and silver. If they dropped a single coin it would be valuable today, perhaps very valuable. Can you imagine several thousand people moving around in that area over 16 days and believe they didn't lose anything?

Nope. Me neither.

So somewhere in that couple hundred acres of woods and fields there has to be some good stuff in the ground. Perhaps a lot of good stuff!

Maybe I just haven't hit the correct thicket, the right slope, the patch of trees that grew over the honey holes where the coins lie? Maybe the woods have been logged and are now part of the massive potato fields that are adjacent to the woods and the coins have been keeping company with the spuds for a century or so. Maybe I need to go back there with my new detector and give 'er another try?

One gold coin would pay back decades of research and work. Just one.

I'll let you know if I do any good. I can almost see the gold piece laying in the soil now, waiting for me, calling me.

It's time to go get him!

Ohio Dirtfishin'

Ohio Dirtfishin'

You might recall from my last blog in which I talked about visiting an old abandoned amusement park not too far from the town where I live. And that it had closed in 1978 and had been enclosed by a fence and locked gate and deserted since that time. And that recently a development company had bought the old park, opened it up to the wrecking ball and bulldozer and was in the process of landscaping the grounds to hold new hotels, restaurants and other “improvements”.

The new owners of the property have been allowing visitors to walk the old grounds of the park on weekends and quite a number of folks have taken advantage of this opportunity to see what was left of the old Chippewa Lake Park. As I stated in the previous blog, there isn't much left there except a couple of the old rides (ferris wheel, roller coaster), some collapsed and/or burnt structures and a lot of bulldozed ground. The walk around the park was interesting and poignant, like visiting the grave of a distant loved one whom you remember from a long time ago.

While I was there I began to wonder about something. And that something was, “would I be able to use my metal detector in this park?” I found out soon enough that the answer to this query was “no”, but that I would be able to use it in in the old parking lot outside the park's gates.

Let me tell you a bit about my hobby of metal detecting or treasure hunting.

Or, as I heard it called on a video online, dirtfishin'.

I got into the treasure hunting hobby many years ago and have been the proud owner of a half-dozen metal detectors, give or take, over the years. I've found scads of items while detecting from class rings and old coins to junk by the pound. I'd like to have a penny for all the pull tabs and screw caps I've pulled out of the ground over the years. But for every couple dozen pieces of junk I'd dug there also came the occasional ring, coin, key, token and other interesting and/or valuable item.

It's been a fun hobby.

In recent years I'd let the pastime slide as other interests attracted my attention. My latest detector, probably a decade or more old, sadly hanging on it's hook in the basement, had seen many miles of work over the years and was an antique compared to the new ones available today. It was also suffering from some poor engineering in the battery compartment where a number of the spring clips that hold the batteries there were broken or missing. I'd jury-rigged some aluminum foil to take up some of the slack, but the detector was on his last legs.

So I had just toured the old amusement park and had eyeballed the now accessible dirt parking lot. And the old itch to start looking around for new treasures had started growing in me again.

So I pulled the old detector off its hook in the basement and tried getting it to work. I spent a few hours and realized that it was a losing battle. It was almost impossible to make the batteries “tight” enough to power the machine.

I was discouraged.

But then I remembered I had set some “extra” money aside for “this and that” and I thought, “maybe I could get a new detector with part of it?” I talked it over with the wife and she was OK with the idea.

So two weeks ago I drove to my nearest metal detector dealer and spent a fascinating hour with him looking at his selection of metal detectors. He had specimens from White's, Fisher, Bounty Hunter, Garret's, MineLab and other manufacturers. He went over the features of each one and gave me a basis to make a decision. Finally I picked one out . It was a White's Prizm 6T. This was a brand-new detector put out by White's that wasn't even in the catalogs yet.

It looked perfect for what I was interested in.

Modern hobby metal detectors are very interesting machines. First off they are very light, unlike the old ones where weight was a definite drawback for long hunts. This one was about 3 pounds. The electronics part was in a small box with an LCD display that sat on top an “s” rod with the search coil at one end and the battery box on the other. You held a padded grip in the center of the “s” rod and a padded forearm rest sat naturally under your forearm. The battery pack counterbalanced the coil on the other end. It was comfortable to swing and felt much like an extension of your own arm. The display showed a lot of information as you swung the machine and went over a metal target. It showed probable target (iron, nickels, pull tabs, screw caps, zinc penny, copper penny, dime, quarter, half and silver plus the range for jewelry), a value from – 80 to + 90 and the probable depth of a coin-sized target. It also generated an audible tone to coincide with the coil passing over the target. The tone would be higher in pitch for the better targets. You also had a pinpoint (all metal) mode where you could narrow the area where the target was as you slowly swung the coil. You could also “notch out” certain targets so they wouldn't tone alert or show on the LCD – stuff like iron and aluminum junk. You could also increase the detector's sensitivity and, if necessary, set it for salt conditions if you were detecting on the beach or in a desert area.

It was a beautiful machine and I was the happy new owner of it.

Last Saturday I took this new tool up to the defunct Chippewa Lake Park parking lot and gave it a tryout.

Let me describe the current condition of the parking lot up there. It's now a field of approximately 9 acres. It's been logged and the trees removed, but the stumps are still there. Some of the area has been bulldozed to knock down the scrub and brush. It's a rough area to work – the ground's uneven and full of ruts, roots and thousands of stumps from 1 inch wide to maybe 10-12 inches. And many other treasure hunters have been working this field. Everywhere you walked you could see evidence of holes having been dug and “something” removed – trash or treasure could not be determined.

I started around noon. I worked for about 10 minutes and received a decent target signal. When I dug down I recovered a General Motors car key. I thought that was an OK target and kept on detecting. I was getting lots of bent-over pull tabs that were ringing in as coin targets. Lots of them. With the occasional flattened aluminum screw cap thrown in that rang in as a good target also. The discriminator in the machine wasn't perfect and some of these targets looked quite similar to nickels or rings, at least to its electronic senses. At the end of 3 hours I was without a single coin and getting discouraged. A car key and a large lead fishing sinker were my “good” finds. I took a short break and drank a cola in my car. Another hunter was getting ready to go out and I talked to her for a few minutes. She stated she had been there the previous week and had found a silver dime and a number of modern coins. I had also talked to a couple hunters the previous Friday and they'd stated that there'd been numbers of old silver coins recovered from that field over the past number of weeks. So I knew there had been good targets found which boded well for further recoveries. After finishing my drink and resting a bit I started out again. I kept telling myself that this was a 9 acre field and that amount of ground had over 56 million square inches, any of which could hide a coin.

Lots of places still left to search.

I soon found my first interesting find, which was a flattened penny with the Lord's Prayer engraved on it, probably from a souvenir machine in the park in the old days. Then I hit a few modern coins. Then a wheat penny dated 1914. Things were looking up a bit. I was getting weary and told myself just another half-hour and I'd have to quit. Soon I got a very interesting signal. I'd learned over the years what a good signal sounds like in my headphones and this one was definitely a goodie. High number, indication of quarter or better, a repeatable signal from different directions and a smooth, smooth sound. It's hard to describe, but when you've dug some nice finds you remember what they sound like in the headphones. This was one of them.

I commenced to dig carefully in the root-filled ground. At about seven inches down the glint of the reeded edge of a silver coin rewarded my diligence and acknowledged that my guesses as to the quality of the target were correct. It was a 1951-D Washington Quarter. It came out of the ground in the same condition it went in probably 50 years earlier – shiny and clean-looking. Unless the ground is very acid, most silver coins come out of the ground looking untarnished.

I was happy with the find and content to call it a day. I'm out of condition to be swinging a detector and digging holes for hour after hour and my muscles were reminding me of that. I had also neglected my sunblock and hat leading to some quite noticeable sunburn. But...

I'd got my first silver for the year and for the new detector! I was satisfied.

Oh yes. I'm going back this coming weekend, too.

Gotta be some more in there. Sitting quietly in their snug little dirt beds, waiting for my coil to pass over them so they can sing their song of silver to my ears.

I can't wait!

The Ghost on Main

The Ghost on Main

Last Saturday was a gem of a day in this part of northeast Ohio. It was a bit chilly and the sky was vast and blue, with only the whisper of high, high cirrus clouds painting the upper reaches of the air. The still-strengthening spring sun lit the earth like a spotlight from the azure heights and every object in view boasted an aura of silvery-gold. It was a day in early April that almost made the gloom of the long preceding winter worth it.

The wife and I were on a bit of a trip on that marvelous Saturday afternoon to a small town north of where we live. We had been invited to share in the surprise 85^th birthday party in honor of the mother of a dear friend. While making plans to attend the party I thought it might be an ideal time to also visit a place I hadn't been to for over 45 years. It was only a few miles up the road from the birthday site, so I thought we'd stop there before returning home.

Why did I want to visit that place on that day? Well...

While at work recently I'd heard talk of a big construction project commencing in a village close to the city I worked in. A plot of land in that village was being cleared to make room for the construction of a four-story Hilton Hotel along with cabins and boathouses on the adjacent lake front. Then, in a following phase of construction, a conference center, restaurants and retail shops were slated to be constructed. Then, after that, possibly a Japanese-style spa, a wellness center and an accredited culinary institute would also be built.

It wasn't so much the development of the land that sat on the edge of Chippewa Lake that interested me as much as the previous use of the land now being cleared for that development.

That site, for exactly one hundred years, had been the home of the Chippewa Lake Amusement Park. And this park, which had been closed and abandoned since 1978, now had its gate open (to allow the dozer's access) and, on weekends, was allowing people to wander through the nearly-cleared park once again without the worry of a trespassing violation.

The Park was established in 1878 on 90 acres abutting Chippewa Lake in Medina County, Ohio. In the 1880's the Miss Chippewa Steamboat operated from a dock at the Park and the first roller coaster in the area was built there. It was a primitive contraption compared to the modern ones you see nowadays, by being a single car on a narrow gauge track with one steep drop. After each ride the workers had to manually push the car back to the top to pick up the next load of Victorian merry-makers. The park's upkeep was minimal in those early days and the liquor flowed freely. The park soon deteriorated with trash strewn everywhere and drunks all over. In 1898 a new owner made many improvements to the park. He first outlawed liquor, then brought in a carousel, which was a major craze in those days, along with many other improvements. Later, this owner's son inherited the park and saw it into the Roaring Twenties, when Chippewa's bandstand hosted live music seven nights a week and frequently sold out every show. It was the place to go in those days.

Here's some facts about Chippewa Lake Park you might find interesting:

It is one of the few natural lakes in Ohio and was not created by damming. The 385-acre lake was created by the glaciers that carved the basin the lake sits in around 12,000 years ago.

The first radio broadcast of the Lawrence Welk Orchestra was at Chippewa Lake in the summer of 1933.

Jungle Larry, animal trainer, expedition leader, conservationist and local legend, was at the park every weekend until 1964 when he moved to another well-known Ohio amusement park, Cedar Point.

In the “Swinging Sixties” there was an annual fan appreciation day held at the park that was hosted originally by WIXY radio 1260 AM and later by WHLO radio 640 AM. They booked some of the biggest stars in rock 'n roll to appear at the bandstand there in the park, including: Tommy James and the Shondells, The Outsiders, Music Explosion, Paul Revere and the Raiders, Gary Lewis and the Playboys, Neil Diamond, Left Bank, Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Chylds. There was also Alice Cooper, Ted Nugent, Bob Seger and Glass Harp.

The price of admission in the rock 'n roll days? Fifty-cents to a buck and a half. Earlier on it was only a dime.

A horror movie, “Closed for the Season”, was filmed at the abandoned park in 2008. It should be released sometime later this year.

After a wonderful time at my friend's mother's birthday party, the wife and I headed up the road toward Chippewa Lake. I suppose the drive took 15 minutes.

As we turned from Lake Road onto Main Street, the short road that ended at the gates to the park, we could see that we were not the only people on that bright Saturday interested in getting a close look at the old park. There were maybe 20-25 cars parked near the old gate and we could see some people wandering inside the fence at the site. We parked our car, grabbed our camera and walked up to the old entrance gates. A man near there was telling us “visitors” that we were allowed to go in and look around, but to stay out of the buildings. They were unsafe.

As we walked past the gate in the fence that had kept people out of the site since 1978, the first thing we noticed were the bulldozer tracks. They were all over. The trees and some of the brush had already been removed leaving lots of stumps and churned up dirt. Most of the buildings that had been there from the amusement park days were either crumbling ruins or were charred from vandalism fires over the long decades of neglect. On the hillside to our right as we walked up the hill was the remains of the grand ballroom. A bored teen vandal had torched the place in 2002 and most of the building had been lost in the fire. There was still even a faint hint of charcoal smell in the air from that old fire.

On our left as we entered the park sat the Big Dipper roller coaster. Although this ride was in ruin, the tracks were still held aloft by the tough old timbers that had held them for so many years. Trees sprouted between the ties of the tracks in places and you could see that some of the railings had rotted away over the years. Further into the park to the left you could still see the loading/unloading platform for the coaster, the handrails to direct the lines of excited riders still standing in places, even some paint still on the old boards here and there. If you closed your eyes and listened very closely you could almost hear the faint screams of the coaster riders as they started down that first steep hill.

Moving further into the park the view opened up to the lake ahead and a number of collapsing buildings near the waterfront. Boat ride pier? Boathouse? Possibly parts of the old bathhouse. Maybe. It was hard to tell now.

About halfway toward the lake and a bit to the south stood the old ferris wheel. It still stood on its vee-shaped stanchion, looking as if a slight touch or even a stiff breeze might cause it to start turning again. But when you approached closer you saw a large tree had sprouted and grown up completely through the wheel. Its turning days were long over.

If you looked down, from place to place you could see the narrow-gauge tracks that used to allow the old steam engine and tour train to travel around the park. They were mostly gone, but if you looked closely you could see them rising out of the earth for a couple dozen feet then descending again into the ground.

Not too far from the entrance sat the remains of the Tumble-Bug ride. It still even had the four round cars sitting on the tracks, looking like, with a little brush clearing, some oil and some electricity, the thing could start right up. The stories I've heard also say there were only four Tumble-Bugs built in the world, three in the U.S. and one in Europe, and one of them was sitting right there in front of us.

There were other sojourners wandering the grounds that Saturday. Most of them gray-bearded men and gray-haired women, contemporaries of the wife and I. We pilgrims passed each other, looked in each other's eyes and saw a kinship, a sharing and stirring of old memories and common experiences. We'd nod and say, “Been a long time” or “Lots of memories” or “Man, would you just look at this place!” Our aged eyes moved over the grounds, recording, measuring the present to the ghost of the past that lived in our memories. Sometimes they jibed in odd and interesting ways. Most of the times you drew a blank. You'd say to yourself, “I remember this and I remember that but where is this now and where the hell is that?”

I remember going there as a child in the early '50's. I have pictures my dad took that chronicle my attendance there. I remember going there on dates in the mid-'60's. I still remember the girl's names. Dad even talked about visiting there back in the 30's and early 40's in his childhood, before the war. And my grandfather even mentioned it in passing a couple times as how he rode the trolley there in the old, old days.

Chipp had been there for a long time.

But today it was akin to going to a funeral. You looked at the deceased and saw who it was but also who it wasn't. The essence of the individual was gone. All that was left was the husk of what once was, an empty vessel.

Chippewa Lake Park is now like that deceased friend. It's still there. It has the same name. It resides on the same 90 acres it's always sat on. But it's not really there anymore. It's a ghost, a shadow, a mirage of its former self.

It sits in the sunlight and the starlight, in the rain and the snow and the echoing years, dreaming its long, long dreams of the long-ago times. It waits for the sounds of the turnstiles in the old ticket booths to turn again, for the excited voices of the people coming into the park again, for the hum of rides getting up to speed and the shrieks and laughter of the people riding them again. It knows that its last days are here and that, in a few weeks or a few months, what it was will no longer be.

But, of Chippewa Lake Park, this I will certainly believe:

On particular days in the future, years and years in the future, from certain hotel room windows or from the front doors of new beach-side cabins, it will still be possible to catch a fleeting glimpse of a gleaming new roller coaster full of riders roaring with screams of delight. If you squint your eyes a bit out the window of the restaurant you're sitting in you might even catch a sudden sight of a brightly-lit ferris wheel turning and turning in a star-filled summer night. And if you pay close attention as you wander through the newly landscaped grounds of the hotel or school or whatever might be eventually built there, the faint scent of hot dogs, caramel apples and cotton candy will be easily recognized wafting in the breezes from some unknown origin.

And if you listen closely you're likely to hear a rock 'n roll classic come trickling and echoing into your ears from a ghostly bandstand just around an unseen corner from where you are standing.

The ghost on Main Street will live a long, long time, both in our memories and in our hearts.

May she not go quietly into that dark night.