Patrick Egan's Blog, page 65

The Odyssey Westward: Travels Part 1

Go my sons, put away your books.  Buy yourself stout shoes.  Walk the hills, the mountains, the valleys and the deserts.  In this way, and no other, can you learn of the world and its ways.

–Paraphrased from a quote on a 3 x 5 index card clipped to the dashboard of a ’60s VW driven by a California fellow named Fritz.  I spent two summers camping and working in the remote regions of the Juneau Icefield, Alaska.  We were field assistants for two geologists.  I have not seen or heard from Fritz in over forty-five years.  Fritz, if you’re out there, you challenged me to give meaning to the quote you had in your car.  The passage was credited to a “Severinus”.

–I would like to dedicate this series of posts to:

My brother, Chris.
My daughter, Erin, Bob, my son-in-law and my grandson, Elias Muir.  They are on a journey as well.
My son, Brian. who is on the pier, ready for the voyage of his life.
My wife, Mariam, for being beside me and sharing this trek, in life and on the road.
All my family, friends, lovers and followers who have stood by me.

I don’t know why you say good-bye…I say hello.

–The Beatles

I am at the beginning of a cross-country drive to Orting, WA, near Tacoma.  I am going to visit my daughter and 8 month old grandson.  My wife and I are pulling a small RV (an R-Pod).  It’s cheaper than dozens of motels and we can eat the food we want to eat.  I’d like to say we can shower, but a shower it isn’t.  I can wash my hair if I get on my knees and worship the plastic booth and toilet using the spray extension.  [Memo to self: keep the toilet and booth clean].

So, why am I doing this? After all, I’ve driven from the Seattle area back to New York State before.  Several times.  But I was young then, and stronger and more able to stay awake for long stretches of time.  I just turned 66 years old.  I don’t have the stamina I had then.  Tent camping was an option, but the schlepping factor and the rainy nights on the Great Plains put an end to those thoughts.

I want to use this opportunity to see the heartland of the USA, in the way John Steinbeck (Travels With Charley) and William Least-Heat Moon (Blue Highways) did.  On the “blue highways”.  I want to see the silos, the endless cornfields, the infinite acres of wheat, the amber grains, the greasy-spoon diners, the cowboy bars, the honky-tonk, the music festivals, the fruit stands, how Autumn comes to the grasslands and Rockies, the virtuous farm girls sitting on split-rail fences wearing bandanas around their sun-burned necks (and those not so virtuous with partly unbuttoned calico blouses) and to see the sunset and rise from vantage points I haven’t seen in decades.

Friends! Stick out your thumb and hitch a ride with us.  We have no backseat, but we’ll squeeze you in somehow…and together we can point out the interesting sights together.

You only go ’round once in life…or maybe twice.

But who really knows?

 

To be continued.

The Return of the Good Neighbors

I’m sitting back in my favorite Adirondack chair on our deck.  Every so often, a kayak or canoe paddles past our dock.  I can hear them but can just barely see them.  I have to do some trimming to clear the view to the water.  I thought about doing this a few weeks ago, when the weather was mild, but it meant I would have to decide which chainsaw to use; the electric one or the old gas job.  I couldn’t decide so I’ll think about it this winter and decide next June.

I’m snuggled in my L.L.Bean Fleece Jacket.  It’s green and cost about $48.00, but that includes free shipping so I really think I got a steal.

As I sit back, I contemplate my large tomato plant.  I counted close to thirty-five tomatoes.  None of this matters, of course, because they will never ripen.  The growing season up here in northern New York State ended about two months ago.  My tomatoes look like mutant Granny Smith apples.  I’m bummed out about the whole thing.

A few minutes ago, I was down in my office.  It’s actually a “Man Cave”.  I even put several very masculine items about the room to remind visitors that it’s really a “man cave” and not just an office.  I have a hammer.  A book by Hemingway and a birch bark waste basket…nothing that would be found in a “ladies boudoir”, if you get my drift.  I think I even have a copy of a Playboy magazine hidden somewhere, but I can’t find it.

I write my books in this room.

Back up on the deck, I think about my new novel.  I have dialogue and plot twists to figure out.  And setting. Setting is very important when you write a novel.  How else was the reader know where all the plot stuff was happening.  I should go back downstairs and write.  Earlier, I sat there at my iMac and did some thinking.  Then I realized I had some things to do.  Like write.

I stared at the 17″ (diagonal) screen.  But wait!  I had things more pressing to take care of.  My novel could wait a few minutes.  I had already counted my paper clips so that was done.  It occurred to me that I needed to rearrange my sand collection.  I couldn’t decide whether to sort them by geographical location or color.  I figured that location was the best choice because, if truth be told, they all kind of looked alike.  Scattered volumes of the poetry of Rod McKuen needed to be lined up together in a neat row.  I was so proud of them.  Also on my “to do” list was downloading the entire songbook of Yanni, King of the Pan Flute.  Then, of course, I had to begin on researching my projected two-part bio on “Milli Vanilli: The Early Years”.

Yes, there was an afternoons worth of hard work to do in the “Man Cave”.   So, I went back to the deck to think about all these things while sitting in my Adirondack, looking at my failed tomato harvest.

I settled back and began to drift while listening to the neighbor deftly handle his leaf blower.  The guy on the other side of my property was just getting his chain saw started.  It was going to be a perfect napping time.

Before I knew it, I was fast asleep and deep into a dream.  I had just won second prize in a “Think You Can Dance With The Stars?” segment.  My partner was Lady Gaga and our “routine” was pairs clog dancing.  As the creative leader of the duo I felt the need to ratchet up our demonstration.  So I took Gaga aside and asked her to add a short yodel piece.  She broke down in tears and left the set.  Gaga can be testy sometimes.  How was I to know that her first husband ran off with a Swiss sheep herder?

It was about that time when I was pulled from my slumber by a familiar “chink, chink”.  It was the unmistakable sound of a chisel on stone.  I went through the house and there they were.  Our neighbors from Ohio had returned from a wedding in Newport.  Darcy was back to work on our (his) stone walkway.  I just didn’t understand the necessity of all that work.  After all, I had already put a new sidewalk in last Fall.  I thought the railroad ties looked great.  It was only after several lady friends got their spike heels stuck in between the ties that my wife made me rip them out.

I looked at the progress Darcy was making and began to come around to the general thinking that the stone pieces were the way to go.  But, no one was going to pull anything over on me.  I had gone out during the night and checked the flat stones with a level.  They were perfect.  Just the thing to have as a base for my 30′ x 26″ strip of Astroturf.  I had it all figured out.

Don’t think that I didn’t take part in the labor.  I actually spent several minutes gathering the chips of chiseled rock and put them in a plastic bucket.  I’ll find a use for them somewhere.  Up here in the North Country, a man has to use everything…nothing goes to waste.

When it was finished, we all celebrated with a nice home cooked dinner.  My son, Brian and his girlfriend, Kristin were visiting.  He told bold tales of how he defied all his friends and co-workers in New York City and actually attended a Mets game at Citifield.  ( I raised my son to be strong and brave.)

When everyone left and the activity settled down, I found that I was the only one awake at 3:00 AM.

It was the perfect time for me to got down to my workshop and double-check that I had the correct amount of green paint.  I didn’t want anyone to comment on the ugly swirls of color in the stonework.

I wanted it to be just like a giant lawn.

When my wife and I drive through Ohio (really can’t help it), on our way home from Tacoma, I’m going to see how I can fix up Darcy’s property to really look good.

A Tunnel of Love

There is a Tunnel of Love that is known only to the residents (and friends) of my hometown.  It has a long history, but my life only intersected with this minor landmark for a short period of time.  I can only present and reflect a snapshot in the epic movie of life that is Owego, New York.

Travelers that pass through this town probably won’t find it.  In years gone by, passengers boarded the trains–such as the legendary Phoebe Snow–most likely glimpsed the Tunnel when the train stood at the station, awaiting the signal to continue on to Chicago and points west.  Yes, they would look down from the window and see this strange passage-way that dipped under the tracks.  Little did these people know what they were crossing over.

I know next to nothing about the history of the Tunnel.  I suspect that it was built sometime during the heyday of passenger service when trains passing through Owego, from New York City were frequent.  The structure allowed the townspeople–mostly kids, I would think–to safely cross under the busy rails on their way to the Boys Club or Evergreen Cemetery.

So, how does my slice of life in Owego overlap with the underpass?

One important fact that has to be considered is that my long-time girlfriend–childhood sweetheart–lived only a block away.  I was never a member of the Boys Club, mostly because I could never play basketball, never understood basketball and when I was ever forced into being a part of a team, would not know what on earth to do with the ball.  I knew it had to go into the hoop but getting it there, dribbling, was a skill I never mastered…like piloting a 747.

But the Boys Club did host dances, and dances were a way to hold my sweetie on any given Friday or Saturday night.  But the railroad tracks separated the dance from her front door.  How to walk her home?

That’s where me and the Tunnel of Love got to know each other.  The passageway was lit, but only with a few dim lightbulbs.  Do you think that I, a true red-blooded Owego teenager, would let the opportunity slip away?

I became a thief on those nights.  I stole more than one kiss.  And, of course she needed guidance through the semi-darkness, so I simply had to hold her hand on the way.  At the other end, her home waited just around the next corner.  On Autumn nights, the sidewalks would glisten with freshly fallen rain and the flagstone was slippery.  There was my arm again.  On crisp nights in October, we wold kick the piles of leaves as we walked to her porch.  A good-night kiss came and went.  I walked home, flushed with youth, love, vigor and…teenage passion.

I soon learned that the Tunnel was also a Hall of Fame of sorts.  Couples would chalk their names on the walls.  I wrote PE + MAW on more than one occasion.  There were names and love messages that dated back a decade.

The Tunnel had a history…and I (we) were a part of that legendary passage.

Passage.  There’s the metaphor I was looking for.  The Tunnel was a passage-way out of our youth to adulthood.  Soon, there were no more dances…no more hand-holding…and no more stolen kisses.  We both parted for college in ’65 and our parting was to be permanent.

The Tunnel is still there.  It was green on my last visit.  I walked through with my twenty-something son.  The love notes were gone, replaced by modern urban-like graffiti…none of it I could read.

The walls were damp from leaks.  Pools of stagnant water filled the low areas.

But the Tunnel still had an echo.  I yelled “HEY” for my son and we listened to the reverberation.  Yes, it was still there.

The Tunnel of Love still has many echoes.

Alternate Endings II

Sometimes life is like a box of chocolates,

You just never know what you’re gonna get.

–Forrest Gump

ACT 1–Mary arrived in Chicago and settled in with her sister, Gladys.  Gladys had never married but she was often in the company of a girlfriend, Monica.  Very few men were present in the world of Gladys.  This began to trouble Mary.  Things like this just didn’t happen in small towns.

Small towns.  Mary’s thoughts often returned to the gentle landscape of the village by the river where she had lived her life so far.  The buildings along North Michigan Avenue became monolithic monsters to Mary.  There were too many people…and these people didn’t really know each other very well.  Gladys had many acquaintances, but no real friends, with the exception of Monica.

Mary thought about Ron.  She wondered how he had been getting on without her.  For a time, Mary thought about filing for divorce but now she was having second thoughts.

After six months of trying to find a quiet place in Chicago that resembled her hometown, Mary made the decision to go home.  Not only did she miss her friends and the simple shops along River Street, she also missed Ron.  What had she been thinking?  Why did she leave behind the young man who loved her since childhood?

Mary bought a one-way ticket for home.  Gladys was too busy chatting with Monica at the Union Station cafe to pay much notice to Mary.

They parted.  Mary’s sister would always be her sister, not her best friend.

Her best friend, she now understood, was Ron.

Ron stood on the platform of the Erie-Lackawanna station, clutching a recent telegram.  He looked to the west and heard a distant train whistle.

ACT 2–Gary ate sand that June morning on the beach of Normandy.  He never thought of his own safety when he did what he thought should be done.  He never thought of his home or mother.  He didn’t have time to think about anything except to gain ground and help his comrades.

Tiny grains of sand were still lodged under his fingernails when they lowered his casket into the hallowed ground of Arlington National Cemetery.

His mother clutched a medal.  It wasn’t a Purple Heart, it was Distinquished Service Cross.

ACT 3–Mavis sat in the waiting room of St. Basil’s Hospital.  She could hear the beeping of the respirator.

Three months later, Mavis and the love of her life, strolled along a snowy avenue in a small New England Town.  She paused to drop an envelope into the post box.  It contained a check made out to Kerry’s Funeral Home.  The next morning, fresh flowers would be placed on her husband’s grave.

Alternate Endings 1

Sometimes film directors will shoot several endings to a movie.  I’ve heard that Michael Curtiz had another conclusion set to go for Casablanca.  In this version, Ilsa does not get on the plane with Victor Laszlo.  One wonders.

Yes, one wonders.  Are sad endings better than happy endings?  Personally, I feel strongly that the Janus face of drama does indeed have two faces: Tragedy and Comedy.  After all, in all good comedy, there is a strong core of the tragic.  Chaplin can bring a tear to your eye.  Laurel and Hardy are every men, destined to make mistakes and go through life bumbling…like the rest of us.  I could go on.

I will go on.  Here are three very short tales (Part I).  I’ll do the set up…you construct your own endings.  In Part II, I will share my own alternate endings.

ACT 1–Mary stood with Ron on the platform of the west-bound tracks of the Erie-Lackawanna Railroad.  Her ticket stub had 4:20 pm stamped on it.  There was only one ticket and it was only one-way.  Mary did not plan on coming back to this town, not anytime soon…not anytime ever.

Mary and Ron were married five years and twenty-nine days ago.  They were crazy in love back then.  There wasn’t a hillside or shady riverbank location that was unknown to them.  They knew all the places to neck, kiss and make love.  That ‘making love’ is what started the great love they thought they had to diminish.  Mary never wanted a family.  She wanted Ron all to herself and the thought of sharing his affection with a child struck fear in her heart.  Ron waited outside the hospital room while Mary delivered the baby she didn’t want.

The infant could sense the lack of love from his mother.  This intense need on little Billy’s part was never met.  So, out of loneliness and a chill of the little heart, little Billy simply found another way to get love.  He let himself die to be with the Lord’s mother.

Ron could do nothing to stop this.  Billy’s loss was the beginning of an emotional barrier he built between Mary and himself.  Their marriage grew cold and soon Mary was talking of going to Chicago to live with her sister.  Who knows, she told Ron, maybe things will change with me.  Right now, though, I want to be apart from you and this horrid little town.

So they stood on the platform, waiting.  Ron was heartsick.  He loved Mary,  Indeed, she was the only thing he really did love.

He heard the whistle from the train approaching the station.  He looked at Mary, her eyes were dry and determined.  Ron wept openly and without shame.

Mary boarded the train carrying all she cared to keep in a small cardboard suitcase.  She turned to look at the wet eyes of Ron and as the train jerked forward, she blew him a half-hearted kiss.

Ron watched the train as it rounded a distant curve and was out of sight.

He found his car keys despite his tears.

ACT 2–Gary Stebbins had been drafted.  He had been to basic training at Fort Bragg and was completing a weekend leave before being shipped to England.  It was 1944.

His mother, Mae, simply could not let go of her son.  She always felt she had an ability to sense the future…and at this moment, the future was a place without her only boy.  They stood in Penn Station waiting for the train to return him to Fort Bragg.  She was the only person seeing Gary off to war.  His fiancée was bed-ridden with the flu back home in Kingston.  The father, Harry, had been killed in a freak accident at a saw mill three years ago.

Three months later, Mae found herself standing in Penn Station again.  She wore a blue dress and didn’t bother to use make-up to hide the red eyes and pale cheeks.

Soon Gary appeared in the doorway of the arrivals area.  He was all smiles and proudly held his Purple Heart up to his chest.

That night, they dined at Delmonico’s.

ACT 3–Mavis waited outside the ER at St. Basil’s Hospital.  Her husband of thirty-two years, Dave, was undergoing emergency by-pass surgery.

He had been a long-time smoker and failed to get the exercise the doctors had told him about a year ago.

Just then, the doors swung open and the orderlies pushed him past her.  All she saw was the sheets and part of his head with plastic tubes going into his nose.  She followed behind as they took him to ICU.  Nobody spoke to her.  Mavis was treated like a bystander.  After everyone left, she looked through the plexiglass window at her husband.  She could hear the beeping of the Machine.

She sat down and grabbed a copy of Good Housekeeping.  An hour later, the beeping stopped.  A nurse came out and told her the sad news.  Like a robot, Mavis walked to the chapel and lit a candle.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Sisterhood of the Spirits

There is little hard scientific evidence to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt, but I hold firmly to the belief that women communicate far better than men.  As a researcher in the field, I have heard with my own ears, women  talking for hours about lipstick.  Men, on the other hand, can sit for an entire NFL game and say only such things as “oh, crap” or “‘another bud?”.  It is widely accepted, women have an open heart and bond much quicker then men.  Women have close friends and they tend to bond with their sisters with a solidity that is beyond belief.  Men, on the other hand, tend to have fewer friends.  They have locked themselves down and lost the key when they were mere children.  Most men spend their lives trying to find that key again…but it’s usually a fruitless search. I have often wondered if this intuitive nature that women possess can extend beyond the boundaries of the physical world.  I admit that death can impair ones ability to articulate the most rational attempts to communicate (although, I had a date once…).  More research in the field is called for.

–Professor John Cecil Wadd, Worthingstone Professor of Gender Communications (Ball State University).

Reprinted with permission from “Girls Talk Too”, 1971.

I photograph gravestones.  Over a year ago I ran across an Internet link to a website that provides a clearing house for those interested in locating a relatives headstone.  It is a great help in genealogical research.  The group functions somewhat like Ancestry.com.

I volunteer my services as a photographer to look at the requests for pictures in my area and go out to snap the images.  I get grateful thank-you emails from people who live six states away and will never know what the stone marker for their great-grandfather looks like.  What do I get out of it?  I get to wander cemeteries all over northern New York State.  I have been in beautiful locations…some are sad, some are badly vandalized and some just sit lonely, on a hill, bordered on three sides by cornfields.

Doing this for over a year has given me a chance to get to know the names of important people in the early history of this and nearby counties.  I start to see relationships.  He is married to her and there is their child, buried between parents, who died in infancy.  It can be a sad afternoon, sometimes, to stand and contemplate the interwoven marriages, probably divorces and early deaths of those who walked these hills a century ago.

But some are not of historical interest.  These are just modern-day people who have passed on in more recent years.

So, there I am, wandering the graveyards in fields and towns near where I live.  When I go “graving” I first look through the website for requests.  I choose those that are nearby and easy to find (I hope).  Sometimes, when walking the cemetery, I have problems finding the correct stone.  This can be the result of spelling errors, location mistakes and general misinformation.  There are times (these are frustrating) when the family name will appear on a large hunk of granite and nearby are footstones that simply read “Mother” or “Our Father”.  No names, no luck.

But a strange occurrence one day, left me very tired and quite discouraged.  I had a problem: The request was for a woman named Joann (I’m not revealing the last name), who was said to be interred in a cemetery very close to where I live.  Her story intrigued me because according to her obituary she was jogging on the road that leads to our house.  She went home, and while taking a shower, she collapsed and died of a massive heart attack.  I checked the dates.  She died in 1987.  She was 28 years old!

This is a very small graveyard that holds about 200 residents.  I felt that this was going to be easy…but, search as I might, I simply could not locate this Joann.  After two hours of walking back and forth along the rows, I was getting out of sorts.  I took a deep breath.

I then tried to communicate with her.  Joann, I said with my eyes closed, please.  You died young, way before your allotted time here.  You were a vibrant young woman, newly married.  You were full of life.  You tried to stay healthy.  Please, Joann, lead me to you right now so I can put closure in someone’s life who requested your grave picture.  Joann, call me to your final resting place.

I turned and opened my eyes.  I took a step and tripped over a small headstone.  I thought…good job Joann, you were right here all along. I looked down and saw a name that was NOT HERS.

Around this time, I enticed my wife to join me on my graving trips.  She enjoyed the scenery and liked the walks when the weather was fair.  It wasn’t long before she began to demonstrate an uncanny ability to find the names I could not find.  Look for the maiden names, she’d say, some women are buried with their parents if widowed, or with the husband if married.  But, my wife explained, it gets complicated.  You have to figure out familial relationships to find many names.  It’s not simple sometimes.  She was finding graves faster than I was.  My wife was a great help, to say the least.

It was after a few graving trips that I began to wonder if more was going on with my wife than meets the eye.  Was her “female intuition” helping her?  Was she hearing things that I, as a man, simply couldn’t hear?

I took her to the nearby cemetery and told her about Joann.  Maybe she’ll speak to you, I said.  You know, the woman to woman thing.  She walked off in a direction I had gone a dozen times before.  I leaned against the car and looked over the other names on the request sheet.

Pat, over here!  I heard my wife’s voice.  I looked over, cupping my eyes against the glare of the sun.  She was standing near a small headstone, pointing to it.  I grabbed by Nikon CoolPix and walked over to her.  And there it was.  Joann’s stone.

I was very impressed, to say the least.  I snapped the photo and walked back to the car.  I turned around a few minutes later.  My wife was standing over Joann’s marker, looking down.

Were they communicating?  I wondered if they were talking about nail polish.

World Gone Wrong

Change, its been said, can happen slowly like the pace of a glacier or as fast as a bolt out of the blue.  I’ve seen it come at me both ways.  Brushing my hair one day…and I saw the gray.  Another day, I heard the slamming of the front door and I never saw her again.  Yes, I’ve seen change passing me in many gears, like a semi on I-95.

But nothing prepared me for what I found in my little town the day I took the wrong turn and came home on a different road.

I was miles away from my garage apartment in a small lake town in the northern Adirondacks.  I was busy all day photographing the arrival of Autumn.  There was a certain location near an old backwoods cemetery where I had marked for my tripod.  I would set up the camera and take a photo a week, at the same time each day (always on a Monday).  My lens was pointing at a particularly interesting oak tree at the edge of the cemetery wall.  I planned on putting together a time-lapse sequence of the tree as it turned from deep green to a blinding red.  Perhaps someone would purchase the DVD.  I hoped so, because I needed the cash to complete the month’s rent.

Once my photo for the week was finished, I took to driving the back roads, stopping to snap an occasional picture of something that caught my fancy.  The rural landscape seemed immutable.  On a recent Monday, I discovered a red-headed teenage girl sitting on a wooden fence.  She appeared to me as the “perfectly innocent” child of her surroundings.  A red barn behind her was the hue of a fire engine.  Her hair was that of copper.  She blended in with the scenery like she had been planted there by her ancestors, yet she was so much a part of the living world that encompassed her.  It was a perfect match and she let me shoot several views of her while she stared across the road at the cows wandering the pasture.  We said only a few words to each other.  So much was left unspoken.  I yearned to tell her how fortunate she was to be here now in the present moment.  I thanked her and drove away.

On this day, I noticed a small unpaved lane that had escaped my notice before.  I wanted to see where it led so I inched my car through the hedges and across a cattle grate.  The narrow road wound its way through second-growth pine trees.  The layer of needles on the track muted the sound of my tires.  It was very quiet.  In fact, it was so intensely quiet I found it somewhat unsettling. The day had begun with a sky the color of the sea, clear and crystalline.   Now, however, a dark cloud, almost black in its grim presence in the sky, drifted overhead and made the afternoon seem like dusk.  I felt the need to get back to my apartment and have a cup of strong tea laced with brandy.  The road went on for a few more miles, passing abandoned farm houses, collapsing barns and truncated silos.  The cloud passed and I soon pulled out onto a county road that I vaguely recognized.  I took a left turn, relying on my gut instinct.

It turned out to be a wrong turn in more ways than one.

The houses of my town soon began to appear along the road.  As I drove toward the town center, something seemed wrong.  There were no people, anywhere.  Usually, I would see a guy standing beside a BBQ grill or a couple of kids tossing a football.  Not today.  There wasn’t a soul to be seen. I parked and went up the back stairs to my apartment.  Everything was quiet.  Even the neighbor’s dog was not barking.

I became aware of how hungry I was, so I decided to take a drive to Arnold’s Diner and get an order of french fries.  I pulled into the parking lot.  I  skidded to a stop in the gravel parking lot, shocked by what I saw.  The diner was closed, not just for the day, but shuttered tight and mute. What the hell?  I thought.  Business can’t be that bad. I rubbed my eyes in disbelief, then I went looking for my favorite gas station.  Mike and Ruth would always be good for a laugh (the joke was on me, I guess, for paying their jacked-up price). Hey, man.  What the f….?  It too was closed.  Not just after-hours closed, but abandoned. And still no one on the road or sidewalks.  I was getting spooked.  I had been around this town and down these streets a zillion times in the past year.  But…but all was different.  Something was wrong.

In a near panic, I drove out to the Hi-Ho Motel.  I had been seeing Hilda once a week for about a year now.  She and her husband ran the place.  When Ralph was away at motel conventions, Hilda and I would check into Room 13.  This was where I stayed when I drifted into town.  It took me a week to find the garage apartment of my dreams.  Hilda made sure my sheets were changed every day.  Then she and I would pull apart the bedspread  again.  Room 13 has always been a lucky place for me, if you get my drift. Hilda would be behind the desk.  She’d help me make sense of what was happening.  She always did.  When I made the turn on the highway I nearly went head-on into the utility pole.  The motel was empty and nailed down. I was getting desperate.  I was starting to panic.  Where could I go for help?  I know.  I’d go by the factory where I work three days a week.  Butch, the floor boss would set me straight.  That was his job.  I made a u-turn and headed to the Alpha-Omega Ladder Company. I felt nauseous when I pulled into the parking lot.  Instead of the parked cars of the poor folks on the second shift, only grass grew in between the concrete slabs. I drove back to my rooms over the garage.  I peeked through the glass window of the automatic door.  Sidney’s ’54 MG was still there, covered by a blue plastic tarp.  Some things never change.  Upstairs, I poured another shot of Irish Mist.  It calmed me down and the panic subsided.  I had to decide my next move…when it came to me.  I would go back to the farm with the red barn and find the red-haired girl.  She lived in the country, a place where time stands still and change came slowly.  She would help me. She would take me to her parents.  They would give me something to eat and let me spend the night.  When morning came, they would explain everything. People who lived in the country, amid the slowly changing seasons, watching the barns fall apart at a rate that would take decades to notice, always knew best.  I needed gas, but I was certain I had enough to get me to the red barn.

I prayed I could remember the way.

The Sociology of Corn

I was staring at the obvious and it suddenly hit me like a bolt of blue lightning.

People drive past acres of cornfields everyday and most miss it.  I did for a long time, until I saw what was happening in the cornfield.  It was awesome!

On this particular day, I stood at the roadside and studied the rows of corn.  The symmetry was artistic in its way, but the repetitive linear rows were the work of the seeding machine and a farmer.  But something else was going on.  I noticed, really becoming aware for the first time, how even the tops of the corn stalks were.  The field stretched out into the hazy distance.  My view was clear.  The height of the stalks were amazing in their uniformity.

How like humans they are, I pondered.

Inside each and every corn seed that arrives in a burlap bag from a distributor is the DNA of the corn plant.  Deep in the cells of countless seeds is a signal, built in by nature, to tell the plant to stop growing.  And here is the most incredible thing of all: the plants obey!  As a rule it is not a rational choice with vegetation to do what is best or what is expected.  Their soul and brain are sealed in the nucleus.  They cannot exhibit conscious behavior (as far as we know).

We humans, at the top of the Animal Kingdom, can make choices.

Inside our own cells is a similar bit of genetic code that tells a human to stop growing.  The real beauty, here, is that the ‘stop’ signal does allow for variations.  Not all humans are the same height.  But, given the number of individuals involved, (the population of the entire globe over millennia) the height is remarkably within certain perameters.  Some people are small and some are not (google Yao Ming).  These are the outliers…the individuals that do not fall in the bell curve of human height.  But, again, given the countless numbers, its all pretty close.

Back in the cornfield, we see these outliers.  Every so many rows there will be a stalk that has defied the DNA and shot up another 8 inches…or stopped growing 6 inches too soon.

But its still corn.  And the outlier people are still people.

Tonight, the corn chewers look with love at that fat cob, dripping with butter, pepper and salt (hey, watch your Sodium intake).  These eaters are not aware if the ear they’re holding is an outlier or not.  It tastes just as sweet.

But when humans confront human outliers, they marginalize them.  She’s too tall.  He’s too short.

We should study the corn and learn a lesson.  The people who are off the charts in some way, can be more exceptional in ways we have not even considered .

The Incredible Shrinking Woman of the Adirondacks

Chronicles of the North Country: Part I

[shrink v. To become constricted or to dwindle from heat, moisture or cold.]–The American Heritage College Dictionary, 3rd ed., 1997.

“Population of northern upstate New York shows signs of shrinking.”

–The Adirondack Times Herald, August 3, 2012

You may think that you’ve seen and heard it all.  You watch CNN and assume you are fully informed about the state of the world.  You watch TLC and walk away convinced that you have seen the complete spectrum of human life on earth, from Duck Dynasty to Pawn Shop.  But, I am writing this in the small hours of the day to tell you about the full truth about what does not make NBC or MSNBC or even FOX, yes, even FOX will back off from exposing this story.  This story, that is so full of intense human agony, suffering and tragedy that you will scarce believe your own eyes, is going to see the light of day.  You will be shocked.  You will be horrified.  You will read in a catatonic state of disbelief and fear.  The details will be so frightfully scary you will try to avert your eyes, but you will not be able to turn away.  You will cry out to be sealed in a pit of your own filth to block out the image of what I am about to describe.  And, yes, I am only one of a few that can tell the whole story because I was privy to the very people who were involved.  The others, the rest of those players in this human drama, are gone now.  They have been taken to Area 51 and will likely never be seen again, unless they pop up in a strange and odd location that is a world that exists in its own bizarre world by itself, like Texas.

Allow me to begin by saying that I knew the person that is described in this tale.  She and her husband were friends of ours.  They had a lovely camp here on Rainbow Lake, in upstate New York.  Their home was artistically appointed with rare and valuable Adirondackia.  The hand of creativity had swept the house’s interior.  The decor was pleasing and intriguing.  In other words, it looked nice.

Since I’ve been sworn to secrecy, I will call her Judy.  Her husband is John and their grown daughter is Jean.  Her mother’s name was Jane and his father’s name was Joe (Joseph, for short).  They were amiable people and we enjoyed many a fine evening of gourmet dinners, superb desserts and glass after glass of the finest beverage in their cellar.  I’m no connoisseur, but it was the best tasting Bud Lite east of the Mississippi River.

Then Judy began to descend down the path of tragedy and mystery.  We ended up at their boathouse and looked at the 75 HP Evenrude.  Very impressive, I must say.

It was while we were all sitting in our Adirondack chairs on our very own deck, that I first noticed the beginning of her problem.  Her problem that was to demagnify itself into history.

The days were getting shorter.  I went inside to put away my shorts in favor of “long pants.”  I changed from my short-sleeved shirt to a “long-sleeved shirt”.  I returned to our very own deck when I noticed that Judy’s shoe had fallen off.  She giggled and put it back on.  It slipped off again.  Strange, she said, it fit tight this morning.  We spent the remaining hour singing “It’s A Small World After All”.  That was the beginning.

Within a few weeks, it became obvious to people like me who can see the details.  Judy was getting smaller.  Now, there’s nothing wrong with that, as far as I’m concerned.  Each to his or her own.  If that’s the lifestyle she is choosing, who am I to judge?

I began to google the phenomenon on my computer.  What I discovered nearly short-circuited my synapses.  There was, it seems, a spate of articles that appeared in such prestigious periodicals as The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, The Lancet, JAMA, Martha Stewart Living and Arthritis Today.  These articles were common for a short period, but after several months, the flow of information was cut short.

There was even a groundbreaking documentary on AMC titled “The Incredible Shrinking Man.”

Now, the documentary was about a male, but from what I read, the recent occurrences were involving females.  Does that suggest that man cannot shrink?  It’s been noted that men have been known to shrink but not at the rate that women have achieved in recent years.  Feminists have been working for years to call attention to the “height ceiling” that have held women back in their attempt to bridge the height gap.

Anyway, while poor Judy was suffering, the rest of the world went on about its larger affairs.  She continued to diminish in size.  Her Laura Ashley cardigans were hung up in favor of simple (and inexpensive) elementary school uniforms for girls.  These garments are found in abundance in rummage sales in church basements all over the North Country.

Soon, John began to feel uncomfortable taking Judy out in public for fear of being arrested for child abduction.

The downward spiral continued.  We all tried to put on a smiley face, but the reality began to make itself real.  In truth, the end was near.  Judy had now dropped to 19 pounds and was the size of a large Raggedy Ann doll a guy might win at the County Fair.

We said our good-byes before we left on an extended working vacation.  We went over to their house and she was sitting in their Adirondack chair.  I thought she had taken on a certain cuteness she lacked before this tragedy befell her.  We left on our trip.

When we returned two months later, it was all over.  According to a tearful John, she went out to their very own deck and climbed to her favorite spot in the Adirondack chair.  Several hours later he went out to serve her a half teaspoon of milk from a small kitten dish.  She was gone.  Only her tiny American Girl earrings were left behind on the chair.  There was a faint whiff of patchouli lingering in the pristine Adirondack air.  John gave us these details while wiping a nagging tear that slowly crept down his left cheek.

These days he sits in the Adirondack chair and reads Being and Nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre.  The melody of Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony drifts from the open windows.  He has a nice SONY sound system.  High end, with 12″ woofers.  He’s hesitant to discuss the tweeters.

Well, that’s the long and the short of it.  In a sense, it’s the story of Everywoman.  You’re born tiny, you grow up, you suffer put downs and you end your existence, here on this small planet, after a lifetime that is too short.

This Is Not A Blog

Let me say this right from the get go: This bit I’m writing right now is NOT A BLOG!

Tonight we had a dinner party to say good-bye to summer.  Now, up here in Northern New York State, saying farewell to August and the warm (read buggy and sweaty) days is to say hello to the “other season.”  It will be beautiful here for about two and a half days when the Autumn foliage is at its peak.  Then it’s winter and winter up here is the reverse of the Christian hell.  It will get cold, very cold until about mid-June.

Our party tonight took place three days after a review was printed in the newspaper.  The writer said some pretty interesting things about the last of my three books.  The buzz at the table was all about me and the review.  They all knew that I had had some moderate success with several blogs on WordPress.  I think I had about seven views.  Very impressive, if I do say so myself.

Everyone was telling stories about interesting and unusual happenings in their lives.  After the laughter trailed off, someone would say: “That would be a great blog, Patrick.”

I shared something about my father and his quirky personality.

“Ha, ha,” our guests would say.  ”Patrick, that would make a great blog.”  I kept saying to myself, I’m not blogging about this.  Later I would say to myself, I’m not blogging about that.

My son Brian’s girlfriend, Kristin, told a funny story about going to a Mets game.

“Hey, Patrick, that would be a great blog.”  My wife mentioned nutty things she had encountered at work.  ”Very funny, Mariam, what a nice blog that would make.

I’m not going to blog about that.  I had other ideas that were in a whole other place.  I mentioned that and they all laughed and said it would make an interesting blog.

I’m not going to blog about the blogging comments.  No way.

So, the evening ended and everyone left except for my son and his girlfriend.  They were staying for the weekend.  I was worried that my son and Kristin would return to New York City thinking that all I did was blog.  I tried to assure them that those stories at dinner were in no way going to be blogged.  I can come up my own ideas, I’m a good writer, after all.  Just read the review.

So this posting is about an enjoyable evening spent with great friends and family.  I would not steal any of their stories and turn them into a blog for my own use.  I do have principles, after all.  Some day I’ll blog about those principles, maybe.

But this is a simple story about a dinner party.

This not a blog!