Early October Musings

Early October Musings

In case you might be a bit curious, yes, I still have a cold. Or is it the flu? Or some other virus which will forever be unnamed? I'm sure I don't know. All I'm sure of is that I've been “less than healthy” for about the last four weeks. I guess that's pretty much the usual for me around this time of the year – bit of a cough, occasionally a brief fever, quite stuffy in the nose and the voice that sounds like it's rising from a crypt somewhere. People who know me have been seen to do a double-take when I've opened my mouth to speak recently. And to verify that it was me who was speaking. I haven't been real sick, but, then again, I haven't been real well, either. I'm kind of in the middle. Too well to actually stay home and sick enough that food has lost its taste and it's a pain in the hindquarters just crawling out of bed in the morning. One day down in the dumps, the next, feeling better, and repeated over and over.

It'll eventually go away, of course. But in the meantime it's a wearisome son-of-a-gun.

During this time period my boss at work has been hinting now and again that he was experiencing some health problems of his own. He wasn't sure exactly what the problem was, but was mightily concerned that it might be a major life-changer. I found out late last week that he was scheduled for a medical procedure this week that I had gone through a couple years ago. It's called a cystoscopy and it's an examination of the interior of your bladder with a scope. Of course the instrument is inserted, in a male, through... Well, let's say that the procedure is a subject that most men don't like to talk about, let alone have to experience. Any doctoring that needs to be done “down there” is traumatic to a man. And that trauma varies from a mild annoyance to a full-blown neurotic obsession. I'm afraid my boss veers more toward the obsessive. So I told him to not worry, the procedure is uncomfortable but not tremendously painful, and that it would be an experience that he could tell his grandchildren about in years to come. A piece of cake, actually.

And, to be truthful, what I told him was pretty much factual if, perhaps, a bit leaning more toward “not that big a deal” than “Oh my God that hurts like a...!”

He had the procedure performed on Wednesday and returned to work on Thursday. First he was grateful to tell his staff that they found no malignancy and that was the good news. He also said that I had better come to work wearing a flak jacket as he was going to give me a full-blown chewing out. He stated that my description as to the pain involved didn't even come close to what he'd experienced. After some good-natured ribbing he delivered to me as to the paucity of my descriptions of the procedure and my estimation of the pain involved (which he considered much more than considerable), we chatted about the findings and his prognosis. It was discovered he has a large kidney stone blocking one of his ureters and will have to undertake another procedure where they will bypass the stone and let the kidney drain, then another one where they'll pulverize the stone in situ and let the resulting dust just pass through him. And, of course, they'll do it all through the natural opening they used on Wednesday.

I don't envy him but am relieved that he doesn't have anything more critical in his diagnosis. He'll have some bad days, but he ought to be on his feet at almost 100 percent before too long. Whether that will be an improvement on his normal modus operandi remains to be seen.

The weather in this part of the great state of Ohio is shifting into its autumnal phase and all of us folk that reside here are starting their annual migration from a shorts-and-tee-shirts lifestyle to jeans and sweatshirts. Happens about this time every year and we still have a habit of standing around with our mouths agape at the change. Human memory is such a poor thing when it comes to cyclical events like this. It always seems to take us unawares, as if we childishly thought that summer would stay forever. Hell, we all know better than that. But I guess our knowledge is more intellectual and not visceral. Our guts are always surprised. Always. No matter how old we are or how many cycles we've experienced in this northern latitude.

My wife has already started buying Christmas presents for some of our far-flung relatives. The California crew, the Oklahoma folks, the central Ohio batch. She's quite good at starting early and getting things done in plenty of time for the holidays and for the mailing deadlines to get their gifts and cookies to them. Last year she was laid up with a gimpy leg and had some major difficulties performing these early endeavors aiming at the holiday season, but I expect she'll be quite on top of things this year. Last year was an aberration for her.

I'll probably play my oh-where-oh-where-has-the-time-gone card sometime after Thanksgiving and rush around trying to get the perfect gifts and having to settle for the alternates as I'm too late for the A-tier stuff, as usual. Guess it's hard to break with a tradition as ingrained as that one.

I've got a three-day weekend coming up starting in a couple of hours. Saturday, Sunday then Columbus Day. Columbus Day, along with Veteran's Day, Martin Luther King Day and President's Day, is one of those holidays that generally only fat-cat bankers and us government workers get to enjoy. I always consider these minor holidays as some slight compensation for the low pay, irregular hours and startlingly erratic management of being a low-echelon government worker. I suppose they really are a benefit though, but I find myself at odds as to what to do on those days off when most of the rest of the world is working. It's like I'm playing hooky and am always looking behind my shoulders for the truant officer to grab me and take me back to school or, in this case, work. It's odd how screwed up my psyche is, isn't it? But I really have no idea what I'll do on that “extra” day. Sleep in? Visit a retired friend? Watch a couple movies? Work around the house?

Guess I'll figure it out in a couple of days.

It's been over a month since I've set “pen” to “paper” and written out one of these blogs. I apologize for the lapsed time. I think I've needed some reflection time to recharge the batteries, perhaps. Or maybe the death of our dog in late July affected me more than I'd like to admit. In any event, maybe I'll try a bit harder to put one of these things together more often. Maybe I won't wait for Calliope, the muse of writers, to sit on my shoulder and whisper the words I need to type as she has done in the past. On previous expeditions down blogging lane I've been known to just listen to her whispers, type and be totally amazed at what ends up on the screen. Perhaps more amazed than the few sorry souls that occasionally do read these words. I read them and wonder “where the heck did that come from?” I have always considered myself a bit of a shallow person, but there must be a few deeper spots here and there where interesting things can be dredged up from the depths and displayed in the sunlight.

So I promise to be a bit more prolific putting these things out if I can. Perhaps I could tell you about...? Or maybe...? Oh, I know! I'll tell ya about the time I...

See you soon.

Three Boats

Three boats

I've always been a bit interested in maritime things, the oceans, the seas, the Great Lakes and the ships that sail on them. My younger brother was in the Navy and I remember envying him his travels and the far-away places he'd visited during his tour. I remember being in the U.S. Air Force and being stationed in the Panama Canal Zone back in the late 60's and how I spent many hours of my non-duty time sitting in the observation area of the Miraflores locks of the Panama Canal watching the ships lock through, some heading inland on their way to the Caribbean Sea and ports bordering the Atlantic Ocean, and the others, having just finished their transit of the “Big Ditch”, were on their way out to the Pacific and to other places with names that sounded so deliciously foreign. The big boats have always fascinated me with their foreign-sounding names, their massiveness and their appearance of having been to many intriguing ports of call all around the world. Exotic and fascinating places in countries I'd only visited in books or in flights of my imagination.

So the activities of this past weekend played right into those long-held interests.

My son had some vacation days coming up and wanted to spend them with his mom and dad doing something “interesting”. He asked if I would look around and give him some ideas of some places we could visit not too far from home, as these would be day trips and we would return home each evening. I made a list up and presented it to him and he made some selections. I was pleased to see that his choices were close to what I would have picked myself. What was a little odd about them, though, was that we were going to see three ships over the weekend and they were all, in their own way, representatives of their eras.

On Saturday we traveled to Columbus, Ohio and, after walking around the zoo for some hours, we toured the replica of Christopher Columbus's ship the Santa Maria. It's moored in the Scioto River in downtown Columbus and was presented to its namesake city on the 500th anniversary of Columbus's trip in 1492. It's an exact replica of the first one and was created using the original blueprints which were obtained from Spain by the shipbuilder. The ship is 98 feet long and 89 feet from the keel to the top of the main mast. The first Santa Maria was originally just a cargo ship and was slow and not very stable. Not really the kind of boat you'd pick for a historic ocean voyage. I found many things interesting about it when we visited. For instance, it had no ship's wheel, like you might see in a movie about pirates. It was made before ship's wheels were invented and was steered by a large tiller which controlled the rudder. During the 1492 trip, Columbus kept two journals on his voyage across the Atlantic, the real one and the one he presented to his crew. They were assured before signing on that the trip across the ocean would only take a week or two and wasn't that many miles long. He was afraid that if he told them the truth they'd become frightened at how far from home they really were and might actually consider mutiny. As you walked the decks of the reproduction ship you realized how small and primitive it actually was and marveled at the audacity of the sailors. Those men crossed an entire ocean in this crude, tiny vessel. It amazed me as to the bravery (or foolhardiness) of the sailors to have crossed that much water in such a small, primitive craft. Or maybe it was just the steadfastness (or again, foolhardiness) of Columbus that allowed them to make this historic journey.

I was impressed.

On Sunday we drove to Cleveland and visited our second ship for the weekend, a WWII submarine, the U.S.S. Cod. This boat (subs are boats, all other boats are ships) is 312 feet long and 1,525 tons in weight. She was launched in March of 1943 and commissioned in June of that year. She is credited in sinking more than 12 enemy vessels totaling more than 37,000 tons and is the only U.S. submarine to perform an international sub to sub rescue mission in history. Cod returned to her Perth, Australia base on August 13, 1945 and was met at the dock by members of the Dutch submarine she had rescued the month before who invited them to a “thank you” party. During that party they learned of the end of the war.

Today, the Cod is one of the finest restored submarines on display and is the only U.S. sub that has not had stairways and doors cut into her pressure hull for public access. Visitors use the same vertical ladders and hatches that were used by her crew when she made her war patrols.

My wife and son and I walked aboard the Cod late that morning and walked down her deck to the entrance hatch in the bow area of the boat. To enter, you have to climb down a ladder about 15 feet long through a tight hatch, kind of like being born through a steel birth canal only backward – you're going in, not out! My son and I made it, but my wife decided that she would enjoy the air on the deck much more than squeezing through that hatch and down a ladder. So my son and I toured below decks and were amazed by the cleanliness of the interior and how much work had gone into making the boat look as close to the way it was back during the war. The people who took care of this proud ship had outdone themselves in the restoring efforts and the day-to-day cleaning and polishing that it so obviously entailed. We saw the torpedo rooms, sleeping quarters, mess, engines, batteries and control room. It was quite impressive. She looked like she was only waiting for the captain to say “full steam ahead” for it to start moving out into the lake and commencing to dive. The exit, in the stern, was, of course, another ladder/hatch you had to ascend and, even though I'm not very claustrophobic, I was glad to ascend back into the open air. We learned that on later cruises in the war this boat had a crew of 97! That's not a typo – 97 sailors and officers. I was dumbfounded! It seemed crowded with a dozen or so visitors. How they did their jobs with that many men aboard is unbelievable! My hat is definitely off to the men who sailed on her.

Our second ship for the day and the third for the weekend was the Steamship William G. Mather, a retired Great Lakes bulk freighter. This ship was also docked on the Cleveland Lake Erie waterfront and is now a museum. She was built in 1925 as the flagship of the Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company. She was active in the Cliffs fleet until the end of the 1980 navigation season. She's a straight deck bulk carrier with a 14,000 ton capacity, is 618 feet long, 62 feet wide and 32 feet deep. The Mather was one of the first commercial ships to be equipped with radar in 1946 and in 1964 she was the first American vessel to have an automated boiler system. She was donated to the Great Lakes Historical Society in 1987 to be restored and preserved as a museum ship.

What was immediately apparent when we boarded this ship was its size. Compared to the two ships we were on earlier, this guy was big! Not as big as the 1,000 foot monsters that chug across the Great Lakes nowadays, but plenty big for landlubbers like us. The self-guided tour took us all through the ship including the galley, sleeping quarters for crew, officers and guests, bridge, engines and holds. Since this was the flagship for the line, the guest quarters were quite nice, with marble fireplaces and all the luxuries expected in a steamship of that time period. I had a long conversation with a gentleman on the staff of the ship on the bridge about Great Lakes steamships in general and the Mather in particular. He told me a number of fascinating stories about them. In one he talked about how a career on steamships was actually a good choice for a young man. Everyone started at the bottom and worked their way up – there was no favoritism or nepotism – you had to work the positions and learn them before being promoted. There were extremely comprehensive examinations for each rank up so there was no question about a seaman's qualifications for their present position. He said some of the exams were 8 hours long and held for 2 days. He talked about how the big ships would flex and “work” during storms, how some of the below decks passages on the big 1,000 footers would look like the inside of a snake when you 'd look down them in a storm. He told a story about how teenagers in some of the ship's home ports liked to work as deckhands during their summer vacations and how one year, during a depression, the ships weren't hiring summer help. One of the teens “pulled some strings” and got hired anyway. The other teens were furious at his finagling. On his first voyage he got tangled up in some ropes and fell into one of the empty holds 35 feet down and killed himself. The teens that were so jealous of the other guy's luck suddenly were thankful that they didn't get the deckhand job that year. He also talked about some of the idiosyncrasies of the captains of this particular ship – how some made models of ships, some had other hobbies and how one of them, nick-named “screwdriver”, would prowl the ship with a screwdriver in hand, tightening every screw he would see. (There's a lot of screws on the Mather!) He mentioned the comparison of the Cod with the Mather – the Cod had almost 100 crewmen for a number of their cruises where the Mather never had more than 35 at any one time. I found that quite interesting also.

We finished our “maritime” weekend with a nice meal at a Mexican restaurant on our way home and some conversation about the similarities and differences in the three ships we'd toured that weekend. And I thought about the urge, over the centuries, of men to go “down to the sea in ships”. What was it that made men leave the security and stability of dry land to go on board vessels and make their living on the great waters of this planet? For some it was simply what was done – their family had done it for uncounted generations, so they did it also. For others it was the quest for reward, whether it was for treasure and booty back in the early years of wooden ships and iron men or just a rewarding career and a good paycheck in more recent days. But whatever the rationalization might be, there is definitely an urge among many men to measure their strength and mettle against the sea, to prove themselves on the oceans of the world.

The call of the sea is there in most men who've gazed upon the big waters.

Some days I wish I'd answered when I heard that call.

But then, when that urge strikes, I usually just roll over, pull the blankets a bit tighter around me, and go back to sleep.

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!