A Good Dog

A Good Dog

My family lost a good friend and steadfast companion on Monday night. Our little dog Bailey, our four-legged buddy for the past 12 years or so and the oldest of our two dogs, died. He was 13 years old and they say that is a long life for a miniature Schnauzer.

But it seemed too short - way, way too short.

(As an aside, I hate reading dead dog stories. They always make me sad, drippy-eyed and all choked up. I avoid them like the plague. And this is, without a doubt, another one. But the dog in this story was my dog and that makes all the difference. If you want to, you can stop here and I'll not be offended. I'll understand. But if you want to hear about a fine dog, please read on.)

Bailey gave us fair warning that the end might be approaching about a week before his passing, when he stopped eating. We realized something was awry with him and we took him to his vet for a look/see. There was nothing apparent at first glance, but an x-ray soon showed a mass in his stomach which could have been food (if he was eating, which he wasn't) or could have been a tumor. The vet was unsure at that point if this was life-threatening and proceeded to give us special soft dog food to try to get him to eat. He wouldn't touch it. She then gave us some even softer dog food that we could force-feed into him using a soft plastic syringe, but it usually came right back up. After days of his refusing to eat, my wife and I talked over our options and had sadly resigned ourselves to the fact that he would have to be put to sleep, probably early the following week.

Saturday night my wife was preparing supper and Bailey was in the kitchen, staying as near to her as he could. He had always been her dog and was the happiest when he could be nearest to her. During the supper's preparation she had tossed a few small cubes of ham toward the dog, expecting him to turn away from them as he had with most food offered to him in the previous days. To our surprise, he gobbled them down! She tossed him a few more pieces and he also ate them up. We wondered about that, so I tried tempting him with some turkey slices from the refrigerator and he ate them also. We began to wonder if he might be coming out of whatever problem he had. Perhaps it wasn't as serious as we'd originally thought? The following evening for supper we grilled steaks. Bailey was very interested in begging for some of those scraps and we fed him some. He seemed to enjoy them immensely. He seemed to be almost his old self.

We began to hope.

We forgot that dying animals, humans included, usually had a period of time just before death where they seemed to be recovering and seemed to be their old selves.

Such was the case with Bailey.

On the following day, Bailey returned to his rejection of food and became quite lethargic. I tried to force feed him some of the doggy gruel with some medicine mixed in and he threw it all up about 3 hours later. He was weak, had lost a lot of weight and had a difficult time walking. It was a hot day so I left him in our bedroom with the air conditioner turned on to help him stay comfortable when I left for work at 3 pm.

My wife came home at five o'clock from her day's work, checked on him and noticed that he was panting heavily and didn't seem to be very aware of her or of our son who was also checking on him occasionally. She left him in our cool bedroom and checked in on him from time to time during the evening. He was breathing raggedly and seemed unaware of them.

We had an appointment to take him back to the vet the following morning.

I received a call at work from her around 11:30, when she tearfully told me that Bailey was gone. She'd gone up to check with him a few minutes earlier and he wasn't breathing and had started to stiffen up.

It had been about 9 days since he'd stopped eating.

I drove home immediately and hugged my wife while we cried. It's always hard when you lose a loved one and Bailey was definitely loved by all of us. I wrapped his body in a soft blanket and placed him in the trunk of my car for safe keeping during the night. I would take him to the vets the following day to make arrangements for burial.

The loss is still fresh for my wife, our son and myself. Our other Schnauzer, Barney, is a great comfort for us during this time period. He's now the number one dog in the house and he is getting a lot of attention from the three of us. He makes his partner's death seem almost bearable by being around for us to pet and to hug.

But it's still too easy to look at Barney and to wonder where Bailey's keeping himself. When you saw one you usually saw the other one somewhere close by.

Then you realize that there's only one now when there used to be two.

I still remember how Bailey came into our lives:

We'd acquired him when he was 9-months-old from Caroline, one of my wife's girlfriends. He'd joined her household some months earlier as payment for a baby-sitting fee from a couple that was strapped for cash. He wasn't much more than a puppy at that time and was having a hard time playing second fiddle to Caroline's older dog, Shelby. Poor Bailey'd try to eat some of the dog food that Caroline had available in a bowl on the floor for the dogs and Shelby'd chase him away after he'd only got a few bites. This was an everyday affair at her house. Bailey learned early on to be quick to eat and quick to take off when the older dog came into view.

My wife and I had another dog at that time named Dusty, a mixed breed, Benji look-a-like female. We definitely weren't in the market for another pooch, but Caroline was adamant that Bailey'd be a good fit for us and that we should “try him out for a weekend.” She said that if Dusty wouldn't tolerate him, she'd take him back. She had a house full of animals already (her children were always bringing more in) and would love to give one away to a good home. We'd always liked Bailey when we'd visited Caroline, so we said OK, we'd give him a shot.

Bailey and Dusty hit it off pretty well and, after a couple days in our house, we had a second dog. We'd always been dog people and Bailey was an easy dog to love.

Bailey, being a Schnauzer, had some advantages over a lot of other dogs. Schnauzers do not have fur, but hair. So they don't shed. That's good. On the flip side, since they don't shed they have to get haircuts, just like people. So we gained a groomer and a groomer's bill when we added Bailey to our household. They also, due to the hair instead of fur, don't get that intense doggy aroma if you don't bathe them often. Bailey got his share of baths, but the need for them wasn't as critical as it was for Dusty.

As time passed, Dusty grew old and her bodily functions slowly deteriorated. We had a terrible time having to clean up after her “mistakes” and we knew she was approaching her end. We were concerned about Bailey after Dusty was gone, as he had always had a canine companion in the house. So we purchased another Schnauzer pup to be his new friend. We named the new one Barney. I thought it was appropriate – Barney & Bailey/Barnum and Bailey Circus? They hit it off pretty well and, for a short period of time, we had three dogs. Soon Dusty's day came and we had her put to sleep and it was back to two dogs again. We found out from our groomer an interesting fact about that point in time. She'd told us that Bailey, from his pedigree papers, was an offspring of one of her stud Schnauzers, Rap Dancer. And after we got Barney we found out from his papers that he had the same papa also. Barney and Bailey were actually brothers! The older dog had silver and black markings where the younger one had what was called a salt-and-pepper. But in a dim room you still had a hard time telling them apart.

About two years ago the younger dog grew ill and was diagnosed with diabetes which is, unfortunately, not uncommon with Schnauzers. By the time the vet and us got his glucose under control, he'd developed cataracts in his eyes and had become almost sightless. His disease is now controlled by a strict diet and twice-daily insulin injections and he's as healthy a dog as you'll ever see, barring his blindness. And we just love Barney's independence and his feisty disposition. He's definitely his own dog and not anything like a carbon copy of his brother.

And so here we are. It's been a couple days since Bailey left us and we're still grieving some. We still find ourselves thinking of our old friend from time to time and our tears are still close to the surface. We can, if we listen closely, still hear his soft padding footsteps going up and down the stairway, his lapping at the water bowl, his contented sighs as we scratched in those special spots behind his ears. If we close our eyes we can still see the soft shine in his eyes as he gazed at his beloved masters and can still feel his warm, living body as he settled down close to us when he slept.

If there is a just and merciful God, Bailey will be waiting for us when it's time for us to bid adieu to this vale of tears. He'll be waiting to join us and be our loving companion again.

I like to think that's going to happen. I pray that it will. It gives me comfort.

But in the meantime, if you're visiting us at home and if you happen to catch a quick glimpse out of the corner of your eye of a particularly good-looking dog ducking into another room just out of sight, don't be alarmed. That's just our old pal keeping a watchful eye on all of us.

We're gonna miss him. We're gonna miss him a lot. But our memories will soften over time and the sharp ache of his absence will also fade.

But we'll remember him the rest of our lives.

He was a good, good dog.

Fire in the Sky

Fire in the Sky

It was just this past Saturday night and my wife and I were sitting in our folding chairs overlooking the field where my city shoots off its fireworks. We were watching the firemen and the shooters as they walked around the launch tubes and did mysterious things to the explosives under their care. We had quite a bit of time ahead of us to wait for the show as we'd come early, and I was sitting there thinking. Now when I start thinking, I realize that one of two results will eventually happen. The first one is that I'll probably fall asleep. That's not so bad. Especially this year as I was just starting to get over the flu and a snooze would have been welcome. (Hate that summertime flu!) The second result is that I'll remember some old-time stuff relating to the present circumstances and I'll have the unstoppable urge to share it with kith and kin. (What exactly is a kith?) So prepare yourself. It's time for a trip down memory lane with yours truly.

(Pardon the digressions in parenthesis. It's that kind of day.)

As I sat there at the end of the day contemplating the upcoming show, I came to the realization that people mark their lives by certain events. Birthdays. New Year's Eves. Births. Deaths. Vacations and Holidays. They are the inch and foot marks on the tape measures of our lives. And the passage of time for us humans doesn't go by smoothly and quietly, at least most of the time. It seems to proceed forward in jumps, spurts and twitches – first going by slowly and haltingly, then zipping by like a lightning bolt traveling from earth to sky. (Did you know that's the direction they go?) For instance, the wife and I are planning on taking a much-discussed and much-anticipated vacation next week. The time from “now” to the time we're scheduled to leave is dragging by – it's like our feet are in heavy mud and we just can h-a-r-d-l-y slog ourselves forward. But when the vacation starts? Don't blink your eyes, my friend, or it'll be over! Zip, zip, zip.

Anyhow, I was sitting at the field waiting for the fireworks to start when I started reminiscing about previous year's Independence Day celebrations in my town and how different they were in the past. How much of a difference, I wondered, was caused by time passed and not circumstances? I'll probably never know.

I used to live about five doors south of the local college's football field. I lived there for a number of years while I was a pre-teen, 8-years-old to about 13-years-old. It was a fun place to live when I was young, as most of us kids who used to live in the neighborhood would play up there by the stadium and around the college when we had a chance. Riding our bikes in the summer and our sleds in the winter, playing on the fences (they had wooden ones then, all around the field, with a ledge on the inside you could shimmy along), sneaking into during football games and watching the college players and running up and down the stadium seats when there wasn't a game.

Nobody worried about us and we, for the most part, stayed more-or-less out of trouble. Not always, of course. But let's let those memories stay quiet for the moment. I'm not sure how long the statutes of limitation are in Ohio!

They put on the local fireworks display at that stadium in those days – probably up until the late '70's or so. The crowds had increased by then so much that they had to seek another venue. I remember one year when I was about 10 or 11. Several of us kids had crawled up onto the roof of the ticket booth which served the main gate of the field. We'd procured from somewhere a fake firecracker and a number of feet of real fuse. It was a BIG sucker, too. Looked about like a half-stick of dynamite. We'd stick about 6 inches of fuse in the thing, light it and toss it down into the crowd that was waiting on the fireworks. Then we'd yell, “LOOK OUT!” And point to the huge firecracker laying on the ground who's fuse was fizzing and smoking and crackling. We'd laugh like crazy when the people would run, then one of us'd jump down, retrieve the cracker, climb back up on the ticket booth roof, wait until the crowd reformed and do it all over again.

What marvelous fun!

I would guess that those fireworks shows weren't as elaborate as they are now. Not near as many displays were launched then. But I recall the old fireworks shows as being just fine, none the less. The stadium sat in a bit of a bowl, so the echoes that bounced around multiplied the effects very nicely.

In those days they also had ground displays, something you rarely see now days. Yeah, they were a bit hokey, the “Niagara Falls”, the “Catherine's Wheels”, the red, white and blue “USA” and the faces of Washington and Lincoln. But they elongated the program and gave us all more “bang for the buck”. And, occasionally, they would give us an unexpected thrill.

I remember one year we were sitting in the grandstand watching the show. One of the ground displays was a big wheel whizzing around on a post and shooting off flames of different colors. It would spin and then go “boom”. Then spin some more and go “boom” again. Big booms! All at once that wheel became detached from the pole it was mounted on and commenced rolling toward the grandstand, flaming and hissing! Knowing that there were plenty of booms left on that wheel, you could see the crowd gasp and begin to rise to it's feet – ready to get out of the way, if possible. Fortunately (I guess) it fizzled out halfway across the field and fell over.

I still wonder what would have happened if it had rolled all the way across the field and tried to climb into the grandstand. That would have been a Fourth of July to really remember!

I recall going to the fireworks in 1976. My father had remarried that year (my mother passed in '72) and I, my brothers and my new step-brother and step-sisters attended that celebration all together. There were seven of us, plus a couple spouses by then. My younger brother had mixed up about a gallon of wine cooler and put it in a Thermos jug and we took it along. Most of us became a lot more relaxed than we might have been without the drinks, and the fireworks seemed so much better that year because of it.

So in the late '70's or early '80's they moved the fireworks to our fairgrounds and tried to display them there. It was big dud. There were too many buildings around and they blocked most of the view. Almost anywhere you sat you had an obstructed view. That experiment lasted only a couple of years.

They then moved them to their present location – a huge field in the north end of town that normally contains a couple dozen soccer fields and a marvelous walking track. They now set the launch tubes up in the center of that field and we observers crowd around in a circle a proscribed distance away. The view is unobstructed, you can sit from right up next to the yellow “do not cross” tape, clear back to some parking lots quite a long distance away to watch the display. It all depends on how close you actually want to be. My family's generally been one of the group defined as “the closer the better”. However, my wife and I have discussed this tradition (aberration?) recently and might be willing to forgo the “up front and personal” viewing position for one with a bit more distance between us and the aerial extravaganza. This discussion was initiated the last few years by the amount of ash that's been falling on us during the performances. Some years, when the wind is blowing in our faces, we've actually been covered in ashes by the end of the performance.

That's starting to seem a bit too close for us now.

As I sit here typing this I realize I'm continually amazed at how FAST the Fourth of July seems to arrive each year. It seems that we just see our last bit of snowfall, have a couple weeks of warmer weather and BANG – it's Independence Day! Summer's 1/3 over.

And I barely noticed it starting!

So, boys and girls, another milestone for the year has passed. We can now begin to mark time as before-or-after the fireworks this year. Did I read such-and-such book in June or July this year? Oh – it was before the fireworks so it had to be in June.

And so it goes. The milestones that are way, way, way up ahead through your imaginary windshield are soon dwindling rapidly in your hypothetical rear-view mirror.

Happy Fourth of July, everyone. Hang on to it as long as you can. Labor Day and the Fair will be here before you know it!

Of Earbugs, Treasures and Triumphs

Of Earbugs, Treasures and Triumphs

I made a mistake about a week ago. It wasn't a big mistake. In fact, it didn't even seem like a mistake at all at the time. But this error I made had some consequences that weren't particularly pleasant. It was sometime in the middle or late last week and I was at work. It was early evening (I work 2^nd shift) and things seemed just a bit too quiet around the empty office. As a rule I generally like things quiet. I read a lot in the evenings after performing some of my job duties and while I monitor a program that runs on the computer 24/7. I find music in the background, while I'm reading, distracting. But I had finished my reading for the night and had suddenly realized that I had some extra work to accomplish which I had forgotten. It was one of the mindless tasks I have to do occasionally. I thought that while I was doing it, a bit of music might make the boring task go by quicker. So I reached into my desk drawer, pulled out the CD's that were there and looked through the collection. Did I want to listen to some old Bob Dylan? No – he took some concentration and I'd have to pay attention, at least a little, on the upcoming task. How about some folk singing? Ian and Sylvia? Arlo Guthrie? Naw. Wasn't in the mood. OK, how about some Tommy, by the Who? Don't think so. Or some ol' Blue Eyes? Uh-huh. I ended up holding two CD's in my hands: Saturday Night Fever by the Bee Gee's and ABBA's Greatest Hits.

Looking back at my decision from this vantage point I suppose I should have gone with the Bee Gee's. But I didn't and went with ABBA.

Now if you're not familiar with ABBA (and what planet are you from if you're not), you know it's pretty mindless music – repetitive choruses, simple tunes, lots of repetition. Their songs are bouncy, catchy and easy to sing along with. So far, so good.

They're also very likely candidates for earbugs.

In case you've never heard the term, an earbug is a fragment or a line or a verse from a song that gets “stuck” in your head and you can't get rid of it. You find yourself humming it, whistling it, even singing it unconsciously. It can be funny if it lasts a day or two. It can be a bit annoying if it lasts three or four day.

I'm about ready to start my third week with this particular earbug. I hate to even type the name, as that'll probably sentence me to another week with this one swirling around in my brain. But I'll take a deep breath and do it anyway. It's their “Momma-mia” song.

“Momma-mia”, for Pete's sake.

Can't you just HEAR the doggone thing now! “Mamma mia, here I go again. My my, how can I resist you? Mamma mia, does it show again? My my, just how much I've missed you”. They say that ABBA, being Swedish, sang their English songs by syllable-sound, as they didn't know the language. So, not only was it semi-mindless music, it was just gobbley-gook to them even as they recorded it.

Trust me when I say it's been rattling around in my noggin for a LONG time. It's my alarm clock to get me up in the morning and my good-night anthem in the evening. I'm actually humming the damn thing as I type these words! I've even listened to lots of other music, trying to dislodge it. Hasn't happened yet. So... I'm stuck for the meantime with over-hyped Swedish voices in my brain perkily singing about their DAMN Momma mia!

Anyhow...

A few weeks back, before ABBA took over my brain, I was reading on the Internet about a new game that was being played all over the world. It sounded interesting, so I read some more about it. The game is called “geocaching”. The official description of the game goes like this:

“Geocaching is a high-tech treasure hunting game played throughout the world by adventure seekers equipped with GPS devices. The basic idea is to locate hidden containers, called geocaches, outdoors and then share your experiences online. Geocaching is enjoyed by people from all age groups, with a strong sense of community and support for the environment.”

When I read about it I was intrigued and that lead me to do some more reading. I found out there are over 800,000 geocaches hidden around the world. I found out there were 382 caches hidden within 20 miles of where I lived. I learned that all you needed to start playing the game was a GPS receiver. The more I read, the more it sounded like fun. I had a few dollars available for entertainment use tucked away, so I placed a bid for a GPS unit on eBay and won it. Within a week I was the proud owner of a Garmin eTrex H GPS receiver.

I went out caching the very day I received the unit. I'd looked out on the geocaching website and found that the closest cache to my home was less than a mile away in one of the parks. I jumped into the car and drove there in a couple of minutes. I entered the coordinates of the cache I was searching for, gave the GPS unit the “goto” command and saw I was about 250 feet away from the target. I followed the arrow on the unit until the distance to the target was about 5 feet. The new units can place you quite close to the target, but quite close still might be 20-30 feet away. I looked around when it said I was close. I was standing in a mowed area of the park with several large oak and maple trees not too far away, some smaller evergreens the other direction not too far away and not many other places where one could hide a cache. I wandered around, looked at the bigger trees and didn't see anyplace where something could be hidden. I examined a park bench nearby. Nada. I poked around in the smaller pine trees. Zip. I scratched my head. This might just be harder than it first appeared. I drove back home and re-checked that cache's website. I read a clue that the hider had left there and read some of the logs of the people who had found the cache before me. They gave me some ideas of the size of the cache's container and where it might be. I went back to the park and started looking around a bit closer. I finally crawled almost into one of the small pines and looked in the litter under the tree. There laid a vitamin bottle painted brown to blend in with the dropped pine needles. I hadn't seen it before.

I had found my first cache! I pulled out the container and opened it. There was the log, a pen and a couple small “trades”. A “trade” is usually a small inexpensive toy that will fit into the container. The procedure cachers generally use is to first take a prize, then leave a prize equal to or better than what you took. You trade goodies. Or you can just sign the log and forgo trading treasures. I signed the log on that first cache, replaced the container exactly where it was when I first found it and went back home. I pulled up that cache's website on the PC and logged my visit to it.

Number One was in the bag!

Over the next couple of days I found another 3 or 4 caches and had logged them. My wife was getting a bit curious about what I was doing, so I sat her down next to me by the PC and showed her what geocaching was all about. I also said that there was a cache just out of town near a small country bridge that I had not been able to find. Maybe she'd like to come out there with me and help me find it? She agreed and rode along.

We arrived at the lonely bridge and got out of the car. I showed her the GPS unit and how it indicated that the cache was near the east end of the bridge. The hint said the cache was magnetic, so I had been looking all over the bridge's steelwork and had not been able to spot the container. She helped me look and we spent the next 10 minutes or so examining the bridge. I finally found the little bugger. I showed it to her, showed the log inside and how I signed it with my geocaching “handle”.

She was intrigued.

The next weekend she tagged along while I searched for a few more caches. She even found a couple herself.

I think she got hooked around that time.

The last few weeks we've been going caching together every weekend. We've managed to bump up our found total to 70 caches. We've located them all over the place. Parks, cemeteries, empty fields, parking lots, private home's front yards, hiking/biking trails, along rivers and in deep woods. They've ranged in size from .50 caliber ammo boxes or largish Rubbermaid tubs to small metal tubes the size of your pinky finger plus every size in-between. And they've been hidden in the most ingenious and diabolical of places. You really have to be observant to find some of the more clever hides. The rules of the game stated that they should NOT be buried and should NOT be placed near locations or structures where someone might think a cache was a bomb. Also, no railroad tracks. No National Parks. No private land unless authorized.

My wife has purchased her own collection of “trades” now and thoroughly enjoys “taking and giving” from her goodie bag when we hit a new cache. I sign the log and she looks at the toys.

And do you know what's the nicest part of it all? We're doing it together. We've been married for almost 38 years now and have begun, over the years, to go our own way a lot. She had her own pastimes and interests and I had a lot of my own. We'd be together for family stuff, vacations and what not, but a lot of the time we'd be apart, doing our own thing.

Now it's quite different. We're talking about the hobby, planning where we're going next and traveling here and there hunting the caches. We're good-naturedly arguing about where a cache should be and where it might be. And it's lots more fun and easier to find the toughies when there's four eyeballs looking instead of just two. Sometimes a clue can be interpreted several different ways and one person might not see the true answer where another would. That's happened also.

She's still not ready to go for the tougher ones, the ones down steep hillsides in dense woods or a long ways down a trail. She started a diet with Weight Watchers earlier this year and has lost around 30 pounds. She's become much more able to move around physically than she did last year, but still has a way to go before she returns to a more comfortable weight and can attempt to find the more physical caches. But she's getting there, and the results, even now, are amazing. Losing the weight has made her more able to accomplish physical tasks that were difficult or impossible for her only just last year. She's more mentally alert and her attitude has improved dramatically. She's a much happier lady! And the enthusiasm she's showing for our new hobby also affirms her return to a more active lifestyle.

All in all, the past month or two has been an interesting period in our lives.

I just wish I could look at her without humming, “Mamma mia, here we go again!”

Friends and Other Strangers

Friends and Other Strangers

The phone rang around 11 o'clock on Sunday morning while I was getting dressed. I'd gotten up hours earlier, run some errands and had read the Sunday newspapers. Now I, along with my wife, were getting ready to head out for the day's festivities. On the phone was my good friend Chuck with some bad news to report. He wasn't going to be able to make it to the picnic that day. He was suffering from a bad cold or some kind of sinus problems and just didn't feel up to it. I told him I was sorry for his misery and to take care. I told him I'd call after the picnic and let him know how it went. I hung up, shook my head and quietly said, “Dammit!”

I then yelled downstairs to my wife. “Chuck isn't going to go today. Says he has a cold or sinus or something.”

She replied, “Oh well.”

Sunday was the Class of '65 Spring Fling at a local city park and Chuck and I were both supposed to be attending, along with our wives. I had been unable to go to this annual event the previous couple of years because of scheduling conflicts – vacations and reunions that were impossible to move. This year, at last, my schedule was clear and I'd been looking forward to this picnic for some months. I was also hoping that Chuck would be able to attend. We were good friends from way, way back, grade school, actually, and I considered him my “lifeline” for this picnic. If I went to the get together and didn't hardly know anyone, at least Chuck and I could chit-chat. Now that alternative was off the table and I was flying solo today.

I was on my own.

Of course my wife would be with me and of course we could talk if none of my other friends from school were there. But... Well, I guess we'd just see how things transpired.

We loaded up the car with the necessary things we had to take to the picnic and headed off on our journey. It took about 5 minutes. The park where the picnic was to be held was only a few blocks from my house in the smallish city where we live. The three or four people from my high school class who were taking care of things had reserved one of the smaller pavilions for this soirée as they had done in the previous three years. The usual attendance in years past had been in the 20-30 person range and they were expecting about the same this year. It was a small group, but that was nicer in a way. You could end up seeing and talking to most of the attendees.

We arrived and carried our stuff from the car to the pavilion. We had our table service in our handy-dandy picnic hamper, our small cooler with a couple cans of pop on ice, our contribution to the pot-luck food table – two Key Lime pies and a bag of baked potato chips - and a “White Elephant” gift for the after-dinner bingo game. I'd pondered what to bring for this part of the festivities for quite a while, never having been to this gathering before and not being aware of what was “appropriate”. I figured that it was probably going to be mostly joke gifts, so I packed an ugly vase I'd bought at a garage sale a few weeks earlier for just that purpose.

I found out I was pretty much on target with it.

After we'd set up our dinner service – a well-used plastic tablecloth, plastic plates and silverware, we chit-chatted a bit with Valerie, my friend Chuck's cousin, who'd graduated the same year we had. I told her that Chuck had called and begged off this morning. She asked what his excuse was this time. I told her cold or sinus problems. She snorted and gave me that “couldn't he come up with a better excuse than that” look. I nodded and said, “Maybe he really is down with some misery. He did sound a bit nasal.” Valerie gave him the benefit of doubt and we went on talking about the upcoming picnic.

I graduated from high school in 1965 with a class of about 318 kids. I suppose that there were a couple dozen kids in those days that I was pretty good friends with, perhaps 3 times that many who I was friendly with. Maybe another fifty or so I could come up with their names and would nod to when we'd pass each other in the halls or in class. The rest? Not so much. Most not at all. I suppose you could say I wasn't as social as I could have been. A bit shy, if you wanted to put a name on it and I'd admit to it now. But I did have close friends and I did date when I was in school. I wasn't quite the blithering wallflower, but I wasn't the big-man-on-campus, either. My senior year I was dating someone from outside my school, so that probably shot down some opportunities I would have had to get to know some more of the kids in the class better.

So let's move forward almost exactly 44 years from graduation day. Here's a couple dozen people milling around the pavilion – some of them are your classmates and some of them are your classmates spouses.

Pick 'em out. Go ahead, pick 'em and put a name to 'em. I dare ya!

I'm sure glad I wasn't getting graded on this assignment. And you feel, in situations like this, at least I did, that your not knowing those people is a failing on your part. That you should be able to recognize these people, even if you'd only seen them every 5 or 10 years at reunions, if then. Some probably not since graduation.

Sorry folks. Didn't happen.

I did end up seeing and talking to a few of my classmates that I'd grown to know over the years since graduation and a few I did happen to remember vividly from those years.

And those personal reunions made the trip totally worthwhile all by themselves.

First there was Toni. Toni and I had dated a bit back in high school and I'd really liked her. We'd gone to some of the school dances together in those days. They seemed to occur almost every weekend. While we talked at the picnic table she remembered a particular Christmas dance we'd attended. We'd stopped either before or after the dance at a fancy restaurant just outside of town with another four or six kids from school. We ate steak and maybe lobster at the time. This was a very big deal for us. I think one of the rich kids who we were friends with paid the bill. When we first met at the pavilion that day, Toni came up to me and asked if I was who she thought I was. I acknowledged that her guess was correct and then I looked at her, looked at her big, dark glasses, her hair, her face. And I knew who she was then. I said, “Toni.” She smiled and we hugged each other. We talked for a while and I introduced her to my wife, albeit not as quickly as I should have (gotta watch that). I was too busy assimilating the Toni of today and comparing her with the Toni of the past. All too soon she had to leave for an hour or two as her family was having a picnic at another pavilion in the park and she had to slip down there for a while.

Then there was Barbara. She and I had connected about 4 years ago after our last major class reunion, the 40^th. We hadn't been particularly close in school, but she'd found out that we had an odd connection. We were both born on the same day! Actually only hours apart and in the same building. She'd started to write me emails and we got friendly with each other by doing that. We called each other “my twin.” We shared some reminiscences in our emails and wrote about our lives since high school. She was, at that time, married, retired from being a schoolteacher teaching grade school, and living in New Hampshire. We made sure we sent each other birthday greetings and we never had ANY problem remembering what that day was! And we sure couldn't lie to each other about how old we were! Barbara could probably be voted as the most preserved of all of our class. I won't tell her age, but she looked almost 20 years younger than the rest of us. It was great to talk to her again, too.

I talked to Gary and Carol who were a major part of getting this Spring Fling organized and rolling. Gary is the sysop of the bulletin board that keeps the class together, www.woosterclassof65.com. The pavilion where we meet carries his last name, but I'm not sure if it's just a coincidence or if his family had some influence in erecting it. It was nice to see them again.

And I talked for a bit with a fellow named Steve. Steve was a guy whom I'm sure I hadn't spoken two words to since graduation. We'd been in Boy Scouts together for a couple years, but really didn't run in the same crowd in school. He'd gone on to a number of ventures over the years after school including owning his own automobile dealership. Steve had what could be charitably called an unfortunate face. Not classically handsome, I guess, could be another way of saying it, and he was always terribly thin. But the boy and man had a thousand-watt personality and, during his school years, NEVER went without a friend or a date. He was Mr. Popular, personified. I was happy to speak to him again, too.

I also spoke a bit to some of the other folks there. Some were familiar but I couldn't come up with a name. Others were friendly but whether they were classmates or spouses? Don't know.

But you know what? It really didn't matter! We were all of an age and of a certain generation. We'd experienced life in the same decades and we all connected, we clicked. It was doggone nice to see them, too.

Whoever they were!

Our lunch was quite tasty, starting with hot dogs freshly grilled by Gary and continuing through ham loaf, pizza, beans, spuds, deviled eggs, salads both vegetable and fruit, and various and sundry very tasty desserts. It would have been impossible to go home hungry.

After the meal we commenced with the White Elephant Bingo game. There were about 20 gifts sitting wrapped on the table as prizes. The first bingo got to pick one of them. The next ones also got their pick. We all kept our same bingo cards going, so the bingos got heavy and frequent quite soon. Everyone got multiples. After the table had been cleared of gifts, subsequent bingos got to steal gifts from previous winners. Some of the gifts passed through a dozen hands or more during the game. Some of the women thought this was hilarious and were laughing until tears were coming out of their eyes. When all the cards were filled and all the numbers had been called, the gifts in front of you were yours to keep. Everyone ended up with at least one gift and some of them were quite clever. One was a box of graham crackers, a bag of marshmallows, a chocolate bar and some firewood. Do-it-yourself s'mores! Another was a Garfield the Cat telephone which has been floating around these Flings since the start. I expect to see it wrapped up again next year. There were books and vases and candles and holiday plates. In my gift bag was a brick. A brick? I was mystified about it until the person who brought it explained that it came from the construction site of our old high school when it was being remodeled into a grade school a number of years ago. It was a piece of my old high school! I thought it was a perfect gift for a high school get together!

Soon after the bingo game finished and we'd all examined and exclaimed our satisfaction or mystification over the various gifts, the people began to pack up and head out. Some were heading back to hotels and then to various airports and flights to take them back to where their homes were. Some had long drives ahead of them to neighboring states or even further. A few of us stick-in-the-muds had only short miles or even short blocks to go before returning home.

I said farewell to the few classmates who meant the most to me with hugs and promises to write and to see each other again as soon as we could. I waved and nodded to the others, receiving the same in kind. I looked around, trying to fix faces, trying to remember, trying to place us all, at this place, at this time.

The dates have been fixed for next year's Fling. It'll be a bigger and better one than usual – it's our 45^th reunion time and they're planning three days of various get togethers. The whole class will be, again, invited to join us.

I wonder if what's-her-name will be there? Or if ol' who's-it will make it this time?

That'd be SO nice!

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.