Sunday, December 31, 2017

Black Dogs


A personal study once led me to conclude that black dogs are the best. This update makes a case for including other colors.

 In 1958 my great uncle Otto found us Rusty, an unkempt brown cocker spaniel who spent his formative years chained to a tree in a distant front yard. I was about four years old, but I can remember Rusty being tied to a steel support column in our basement, where he affirmed my parents' belief that he got his name by leaving rust-colored stains on the tile floor, the living room carpet, or anywhere else he had a chance to pee. He did not understand “Stay!” and ran away every chance he got. 

My dad was not an athletic man, and the fastest I ever saw him move was running after Rusty up our driveway at full throttle into our neighbor’s backyard graduation party one early June afternoon. He muttered a number of things when he brought Rusty back to our house, literally at the end of his rope. We had Rusty for less than two weeks. 

Our next dog was Rebel. It was a big name for a toy poodle who looked his shaggy best just before a periodic topiary haircut turned him into a living French evergreen. He was neurotic but loving, a total lap dog we bought as a puppy. A puzzled aunt once commented, “What’s wrong with his little pink tongue?” when Reb sat throwing her kisses from across the room, licking her face from afar. He turned gray and died at the age of ten, just as I turned twenty. He was my first dog-bro.

Yankee (do you see the creative pattern here?) was acquired at no charge from a farmer whose black Lab and Collie got together and had love puppies. He was a dust-covered ball of long black hair that chased tolerant but annoyed horses around their pasture and was thrilled to come home and be my friend for four short years. He slept outside the door of my room, ate furniture, aluminum chain link fence filler strips, and giant rawhide bones. My frightened grandmother held him at bay with her cane until the day I suggested she cautiously hand him a Milkbone. That was the beginning of his weight-gaining period. She had the same effect on me. It was her way of showing love.  


Yankee was an undisciplined runner and not much of a bodyguard. Sadly, he took a tumble down a flight of outdoor wooden stairs and injured his spine. 

After a month of medication to rest his paralyzed back legs, I had to make one of the hardest trips of my life—wearing very dark sunglasses. 

I came home and wrote the following poem.





No way to make him understand

The legs that numb behind him drag

Up to the feet of master-man

His eyes are sad, his tail wags.

 

How do you tell a four-year-old

Who loves but never learned to talk

That life is over, all is told

A final meal, a final walk.

 

And choking now gives way to tears

Decision made, how long I wait

His final moments feel like years

And leave me here to contemplate.

 

Some hastened words, fluorescent glow

"Inject, dispose, cremate, decay"

A signature, a check, and go

Back home to put the toys away.

 

Our next dog came after a long hiatus and with the advent of kids. Jett was black too. Jet black. A sad-eyed orphan found on the streets of Waukegan, he was a complete but extremely well-behaved mess who cleaned up into a handsome young man-dog. He spent eleven years with us, filling every moment of our family life with a presence that lived on in happy reminders and left us wishing for another friend this good. He took his last breaths while I laid beside him on the floor and comforted him. He seemingly waited for our daughter to rush home from college to say goodbye and for everyone to go to bed as if it was then okay to go. I carried him to the vet the next day, carefully wrapped in a little brown blanket. Another of the most painful memories of my life. 

Jett had a “cousin” named Mo. He was a large black Lab who visited us with his “Mom” and Dunkin Donuts on weekends. You felt safe when he was around because he looked like a panther but would submit to lesser dogs, and was no protection at all. He was a good boy who asked little and gave much. My wife accompanied her sister the night he left us in a room filled with love and tears.

On a lighter note… I eventually found a dog I did not love. He lived next door to the house we eventually moved away from, and was a true sociopath, like his owner. Unlike his tan, fuzzy next-door neighbor across the street who looks skyward and happily chases airplanes, Buster chased ducks, killed raccoons, and dragged a dead baby skunk into his house. He was a hunting dog living in the suburbs. He ate my pond fish, dug holes in our yard, chewed up our aluminum downspouts, and stared crazily at us through our living room window. He was insane. He was not a black dog. 

But then our son bought a dachshund puppy while he was in the Peace Corps in Guatemala. The dog’s name is Griffey (after a favorite baseball player), and we first met him via Skype. He cost 1000 quetzals, which sounds like a lot of money. In Guatemala, dogs don’t get much respect. They are utilitarian for the most part, serving as guard dogs. Griffey looked like a burrito when my son held him up for viewing, and was completely cute. He speaks Spanish and is brown. He changed my mind. When we vacationed in Guatemala we of course stayed with our son. That meant sharing flea-infested quarters with Griffey, who wanted nothing more than to snuggle up next to us while we slept but was literally covered with crawling, blood-sucking insects. The poor little guy was repeatedly sent away from our beds to a patch of concrete floor until he quit trying. He remained in Guatemala and went on to father six pups with another dachshund down the road. They are adorable.



And this brings us to the latest members of our family. His first is named Toby. Our daughter went with us to the local shelter called Orphans of the Storm while on a break from school. We intended to “just look.” As Melissa strolled ahead of us past a cage with a brown and white Jack Russell Terrier/Dachshund mix, the little guy practically threw himself on his back for a belly rub and won her heart. We rushed back on a lunch hour the next day to make sure nobody else adopted him. We didn't realize that everyone in the world except us knows about the Jack Russell's high-energy reputation and there was no danger of him going anywhere quickly. His adoption papers stated "Can't Keep" as his reason for being at Orphans. He’s been with us for about ten years now. He is a constant challenge. Smart, high energy, and a completely alpha male, he makes us laugh, keeps us on our toes, and is so territorial that not even birds flying overhead go unannounced. I guess he's Jett's younger brother.

And that would mean that Lennon is Toby's nephew. This handsome young Golden Retriever is living in Illinois, much too far away but frequently showing up in cute photos and videos on our phones. He has an amazingly human personality and a sweet disposition. Named after John Lennon by his Beatles super-fan Mom, he sheds enough to keep the family warm in winter. He recently graduated from his first obedience class.


And surprise! Suddenly Lennon has a little brother named George. We can only hope that four Beatles does not lead to four dogs. They are insanely cute together. Lennon acts more like George's Mom than his brother. He is beyond tolerant, and look at them! What a great pair, and have both grown to ninety pounds. They are the source of endless cute dog pictures.


Next came Matti, the Little-Big-Dog who has visited us multiple times. He now resides in Mexico. The cutest little ball of fur ever, he plays with Toby while at our house, leading him on chases from one room to the next and eventually hiding in small, safe spaces. He even took a stroll across the pool cover, barely bending the plastic surface at only four pounds. His Dad cuts his hair, especially when it covers his eyes or attracts spiky seeds after long walks with his Mom.






Finally, Mo's younger "brother" has found a place in Wisconsin, a place of many more storms than you would think unless you're afraid of thunder and know better. Bandit is a black and white two-year-old Border Collie mix who loves rabbits and squirrels and sometimes snoozes on his back. He likes belly rubs and kisses. He is super smart. He also enjoys peanut butter dog cookies.


So given recent developments, I have to say that all dogs are best. And it really isn’t about color or even the animal. I really believe that dogs are inherently good creatures. Owners create bad dogs and bad behavior. It’s not the dog’s fault. 


 ðŸ˜Ž


If you like fiction and you're in the mood for over 50 short stories, please consider buying "Natural Selections," at Amazon.com.


Or if you'd prefer seventy non-fiction stories inspired by my home town, please consider buying Park Ridge Memories also on Amazon.


 


 

Friday, November 17, 2017

Getting High

Imagine that you’ve never seen an object farther away than 100 yards. No satellite photos, images from airplanes or views from skyscrapers looking down with a heavenly perspective on the world below. It’s just not part of your experience. You are a Mayan, and you live 1000 years ago in a dense jungle on the Yucatan peninsula.

I have looked out over New York City from the viewing deck of the Empire State Building. Chicago is a surreal wonder from the top of the Sears Tower (now Willis) or the John Hancock building. I’ve flown over the Badlands of South Dakota, and crested the ridge of a dormant volcanic peak on Kauai in a helicopter. But none of these compares at a fundamental level to another elevated experience I had in Mexico.

You see, I stood on top of the massive pyramid called El Castillo located in the Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza, several hours by bus from Cancun. The area thrived from around 600 A.D. to the 1200s, hidden away in the Mexican jungle until restoration began in the 1920s.

At 98 feet in height, El Castillo is barely as tall as a ten-story building. But the Mayans were small in stature, and lofty in their dreams of reaching the sky like the Tower of Babel. They were also more astute in the engineering of a method less fraught with risk than the wax wings of Icarus.

El Castillo
We were among a number of other fortunate visitors in 2003 to be among the last to scale the front face of the mighty Mayan temple. In 2006 the site was closed to climbing after a woman fell to her death. Unlike contemporary stairs, with treads of about 10 inches and risers less than seven, the daunting ascent up El Castillo requires that the foot be placed on a narrow tread of perhaps 5 inches, with a rise of just over ten. There are only 91 steps up the side of the first 79 feet. It is the Stairmaster of the modern world, and also one of its seven wonders. It is quite steep.


The Rope up the Stairs
Walking up the pyramid was generally accomplished with the aid of a heavy hand-held manila rope to steady the climber. This resulted in a ski-lift appearance to observers from below and a single-file ascension by most. The return down was a more hair-raising experience, often completed in a slow seated crab crawl, inching down face first one step at a time, or retreating backward on hands and feet, leaning forward toward the structure to mimic the angle of the pyramid’s face. Walking down upright was an errand for fools or fourteen year olds.

At the top the successful climber was greeted with a breathtaking view of the surrounding jungle. The clear air allows for viewing in all directions above tree top height and for many miles. I can only imagine that the comparatively primitive people, with their somewhat claustrophobic world-view, would have felt like gods, or near to them. The bright sun, the strong breeze and the incredibly massive stone underfoot all contributed to the feeling of literally being king of the hill.

At the Top
The small square stone temple at the top has a spiritual quality that causes some to speak in whispers. It is unknown what went on here, or who was allowed the privilege of visiting the space.

But I mentioned fourteen year olds. As we were taking in the wonder of the temple, assessing and procrastinating our eventual climb down with a newly discovered fear of heights, the alarm went up from our son. It may have been the watermelon he indulged in earlier that day. Perhaps a careless drink of unsterilized water during the same time period. In any case it was Montezuma’s revenge (an Aztec, and much later). He had to leave. Now.

Certain bodily urges are great motivators. Diarrhea is a humbler of all mankind. It gets the clock ticking triple time and is both heartless and relentless. Our son proceeded to plummet down the face of El Castillo as if it were an escalator at Macy’s. We watched in horror as he sped down the deep and miniscule steps, flying past amazed and bewildered people, pausing to catch their anxious breath and contemplate the number of remaining stairs in their own journeys. His gate was not unlike a top-hatted Fred Astaire, sidestepping his way down a staircase on stage, positioning his feet to land fully on each step instead of landing and balancing only on his heels. We held our breath and prayed he wouldn’t fall. Ninety-one steep stone stairs is a horrific, unsurvivable tumble, with nothing to disrupt momentum once set in motion.

He made it to the open field at the base of the pyramid and just kept going. He knew that somewhere there must be a porta-potty. Buses of tourists demand such conveniences after a three hour ride. We saw his now tiny image from on high, scampering like an insect, zig zagging across the field until he disappeared into a blue phone booth marked “Men.”

A happy ending was had by all. It was an excellent and memorable adventure that may be lost forever in the future. Scientists have discovered a massive sinkhole beneath the pyramid, capped by 16 feet of limestone that is slowly dissolving. The Earth reclaims what man has wrought, slowly in our fleeting existence, but swiftly on the scale of time.


Saturday, November 11, 2017

Ginkgo Day in the Time of Thanksgiving

First, a little history: The Ginkgo tree is native to China and has been widely cultivated. It has resisted evolutionary change for approximately 270 million years. That’s why it is considered a “living fossil.” There are male and female Ginkgo trees (dioecious), with the female producing a fruit that smells horrible when it falls and decomposes. The leaves of these trees are fan shaped, a very distinctive appearance often reproduced by artists as design elements of all kinds. Each autumn, the Ginkgo is known to shed all of its leaves within a period of several hours on a day in late October or November, depending on location and weather.

We had a male Ginkgo in the back yard of our last home. We called the annual leaf drop, “Ginkgo Day.”

Gingko With Leaves
Gingko After Leaf Drop
I’m not sure what year we first noticed the Autumn behavior of our little tree. I distinctly remember looking out a window that faced our back yard one windless November morning and seeing its bright yellow leaves falling like rain, covering the ground around the trunk with multiple layers, like a heavy golden snow. By the time I got home from work that day the tree was completely bare, not a leaf left on any branch. I have included a short video here of a less spectacular leaf drop, but one that yielded the same results in 2015.


I began tracking the date of Ginkgo Day on our calendar. In Lincolnshire, Illinois the date ranged from November 8th to the 27th over a period of about ten years. One year a particularly severe and early hard freeze caused the leaves to drop while still green in color, but still within the confines of a work day. Ginkgo Day was not ruined, it was just different that year.


It got to the point that I started an office pool, offering a prize for the person who correctly guessed the date of the leaf drop. As I recall, no one guessed the exact date, but someone came close. I posed the same challenge on Facebook, with similar results.

In 2012, Ryerson Nature Center near our home hosted a lecturing botanist by the name of Peter Crane. Sir Peter Crane, mind you, knighted in 2004 and a member of the Royal Society in London. I’m not sure why he became so distinguished, but the dude had his Ginkgo on, and sold copies of his book Ginkgo, The Tree That Time Forgot, which he dutifully autographed for me.


During the question portion of his lecture, I commented on what I’d observed, and that I’d made a game of it. Was this just our tree, or a known characteristic of the genus? He smiled as I described the office pool and commented that the University of Wisconsin at Madison had done something similar. Yes, it was a known quality.

Linnaeus may have named and described the Ginkgo in 1771, but others like myself, in our admiration for our beloved Ginkgo later documented this behavior.

We have since moved to Florida and left our special tree behind under the care of strangers who may or may not be aware what a unique specimen they have on their property. As much as I would love to grow a Ginkgo at our new home, from what I’ve read it will not survive in this climate. So while we no longer have an object of our singular focus, we’ll amuse ourselves with the variety and splendor of the local flora. I’ve often commented that we now live in Jurassic Park. The Ginkgo and alligators have that much in common.




Sunday, October 22, 2017

Eve of Destruction

In a previous blog post, I recounted my memories of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October of 1962. I was eight years old at the time. I might never have reached age nine had world leaders succumbed to their darker natures. In my blog (http://viclarson.blogspot.com/2012/11/50-years-later.html) I wrote about events taking place not far from the shores of Florida, a place so far from Park Ridge, Illinois as to be unimaginable when I was a child. The same Park Ridge where 15-year-old Hillary Rodham was getting involved in student council at Maine East High School. How strange it seems that I am now living in this warm and wacky formerly distant place.

On Friday, my wife Jeanne and I took a small water taxi to a quaint little island a few minutes from our hotel in West Palm Beach, Florida. Earlier in the week we had learned that the “Kennedy Bunker” was closing permanently on Sunday. I had vague recollections that there was such a place, but had no idea we would be staying in the area or that the chances of visiting were suddenly so slim. When we tried to visit during the week, we were told that the bunker would be open only on the weekend, so we delayed our trip to “Peanut Island” until Saturday. We realized that this meant detouring on our way home after checkout, with crowds a definite possibility and delays getting home a certainty.

Port of Palm Beach
Each morning on our vacation we went for a walk along the beach, around the hotel or on the neighboring streets. For a change, we decided to do a few laps around Peanut Island on its 1.25 mile paved walking path. The entire man-made island is only 80 acres, but it is set in the middle of a bay that has crystal clear snorkeling, great kayaking and a fascinating view of the very busy Port of Palm Beach, where huge cargo ships routinely dock to load and unload their stacks of boxcar-like shipping containers. Cranes and gigantic forklift vehicles busily shunt truck sized metal boxes like a huge game of Tetris.

After our first lap around the island, we decided to stop in at the island boathouse, just in front of the maritime museum, a Coast Guard property. Not much more than an oversized garage with fairly uninteresting posters and memorabilia, I thought there might be a slim chance of getting a look at the door to the JFK Bunker out the back of the building. It turns out that the girl who rode in the water taxi with us was returning for the weekend at the request of the museum manager. He honored her years as a tour guide by paying for her train ticket so she could participate in the final two days. She met us at the door, where I looked down at a poorly painted sign announcing the museum’s closing and said, “We’re missing it by one day!”

Closing Date

“Well, we can probably do something about that,” was her whispered reply.

She cleared it with her boss, and soon we were off on an unofficial and very off-script tour with someone who had lived on Peanut Island for years, conducted countless tours and added color not only to her hair (it was blue) but to almost every element of the soon to be defunct historical site.

"Princess Peanut"
If you’ve ever seen post-apocalyptic movies where people are pounding to be let into a bomb shelter that holds only a certain number of people – and in films this is always the number already in the shelter – you have a pretty good sense of what this structure feels like. It was Spartan, of simple construction set into the side of a dirt hill, composed of steel and concrete, and oh so secret in 1962. As a point of interest, any president since the advent of nuclear weapons who has a residence other than the White House also has a bunker in a secret location where key people can be whisked in a few minutes when all Hell is about to break loose. In this case, 30 people could be protected for 30 days in a hillside in Peanut Island, just west of Palm Beach Shores. The Kennedy compound, or winter White House, was in Palm Beach when JFK was President.

Exit to the Light
Our guide opened the creaking circular door, latched with two sway bars that desperately needed oil. As the hatch swung open, we headed about 100 feet or so through the darkness in what appeared to be a sewer pipe of corrugated steel. The large tube led to a wall where John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s photo, an American Flag and a few other small items were lovingly displayed.

“So he came here to check it out?” I asked, assuming that nothing of this import would be entirely sprung on a President without at least a cursory examination.

“Oh yes. And he didn’t like it. He said it was dark and depressing.”

I imagined JFK saying that, “Dahk and uh duhpresseng” in that Kennedy affect.

The Main Room
“Yeah, after they made some improvements and showed it to him again, he put his foot in the door and said, ok I’ve been here” and left, continued our guide, whom at this point we’d come to know as “Princess Peanut.”

We eventually entered the main chamber of the shelter. It should be pointed out that this was not a bomb shelter intended to withstand a nuclear strike. It was a fallout shelter that would keep its occupants out of harm's way long enough to be safely moved to a more permanent location, assumably the White House. But the shelter was adequately equipped so that the leader of the free world could maintain leadership and keep our government running. Bunk beds, canned water and food, cylindrical waste containers (toilets) and hand-cranked ventilation pumps were stored just past the Geiger counter and drainless shower stall where radiation could be contained.

Drinking Water in Cans



Geiger counter
I literally got goosebumps when I stood at one end of the room, perhaps 50 by 100 feet, looking across the official presidential seal on the concrete floor at my feet to the small wooden desk in the corner. There flags and several telephones accompanied a nearby rocking chair thought to be Kennedy’s favorite. Most of these things were props added for the exhibit. For instance, the bright red telephone was never in this bunker. The idea of a red “hotline” to Russia has become so iconic that the exhibit creators felt it had a place here, and apparently visitors absolutely ate it up. Look, the red phone!!!

Red phone
Bunk Beds
Kennedy's Desk
So, yeah Jack Kennedy, it’s dark and depressing. Hardly Camelot. But if you make the wrong move here in October of 1962, if you stick your head out of the vertical escape hatch at the back of this room to look around, it won’t be to catch an assassin’s bullet a year from now. The world will be a wasteland due to sheer human stupidity. Your stupidity. Please do the right thing. He did.

Radio
And yes, Mr. Trump, this is so far from the gold-plated Mar-a-Lago you call home just down the road, that maybe you should spend 30 days in here and wonder about what you’ll find when you emerge, having had your ass saved for a desolate future of your own creation.


Generator


😎

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Or, if you like fiction and you're in the mood for over 50 short stories, please consider buying "Natural Selections," at Amazon.com.

Friday, September 29, 2017

Our New House Guest - Alexa

In my teens I had to get checks cashed at the Jewel Food Store near my house when I needed money, paying a 25-cent fee for each transaction. And I remember a time when my friend’s parents paid for everything with cash, forgoing the convenience of checks. An ATM would have been unthinkable for them. They dutifully reconciled their water bill in person at Village Hall. What a time consuming ordeal!

I never had a problem with new technology. In fact, I was among the first to do my banking almost exclusively online using a dialup service through Compuserve, then Prodigy and NBD Express in the early 1990s. AOL free trial discs began to pile up on our computer desks soon after that.

As much as I enjoy technology, I’m not sure an Amazon Echo Dot is something I would ever have purchased. But we unexpectedly became the owners (or should I say, proud parents) of an Echo Dot and its virtual assistant Alexa a couple of weeks ago when good friends who had an extra device made us an offer we couldn’t refuse. We paid for the Echo with PayPal on the spot, of course.

But the cloud still makes me nervous at a very deeply paranoid, very old school level. The recent Equifax breach supports the fear of turning important information loose in the ether. And we are frequently being warned by people in the know, like Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, that Artificial Intelligence is a looming and very real future threat. And they should know; they built Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

But Alexa is ADORABLE!

At first we weren’t sure what to do with our new toy. We downloaded the app, plugged in the hockey puck and marveled at its spinning blue lights with an uncertainty that bordered on the dread of having stepped on a land mine.

“Hello,” it said in a pleasant female voice.

Following the included instructions, my wife quickly said, “Alexa, play Bruno Mars.”

Alexa quickly complied. My wife smiled and began to faux dance.

“Alexa, stop,” I said. “Play Gordon Lightfoot.”

Gord’s gold issued forth.

We looked at each other with a “burn the record collection” realization that all of our vinyl and CDs had instantly become obsolete. Apparently we needlessly moved them from Chicago to Florida just a few months ago.
I paired the Echo with our Bose Soundtouch speaker.

“Alexa, play the Beatles,” I commanded. And here I must note that speaking to Alexa strikes an innate chord within the more polite among us. Don’t be mean to her! But there is no need to apologize, even though we at first said “sorry” or “never mind” when it seemed appropriate.

Of course, this leads down a dark path paved by Siri and those who know her. Let’s just say that Amazon was less clever in the implementation of Alexa’s responses to crude or clever commands. She’s above all that.

So it came to pass that I had finished my afternoon laps in the pool, here in retirement land. Relaxing on a couple of air-filled noodles, I realized that our 4:30pm departure for a dinner date might be approaching. I wished I had a clock outside. Then it struck me:

“Alexa, what time is it?”

“It’s 4:03pm”

Perfect, I smiled. Still a few more minutes to relax.

“Alexa, play the Beach Boys.”

In sequence, Wouldn’t it be Nice, God Only Knows and California Girls filled the pool deck with perfect summer tunes.

“Alexa, pair the speaker.”

And now, Bose got involved. The music became richer and louder.

“Alexa, play the Beatles.”

Now, what are the chances that Here Comes the Sun would be Alexa’s first choice? Was she at our daughter’s wedding a few months ago?

I laughed out loud. The world had suddenly become a wonderful, self-indulgent place for less than fifty dollars.

I got out of the pool, but not before thinking, “Alexa, mix me a pina colada, warm my towel and call the restaurant. We need to move our reservations back. Say, about an hour.”


Saturday, September 23, 2017

The 51st State (The State of Emergency)

It started like most innocuous atmospheric depressions, swirling westward off the coast of Africa and heading harmlessly out to sea. But as ill-timed blemishes often do, it blossomed into a glaring whitehead in record time, becoming an angry entity seemingly with a mind of its own.
Irma in Good Health

It is said that hurricanes as powerful as Irma can make their own weather. This makes it harder to predict what they’ll do, where they’ll go or how they’ll intensify. But in late August and early September of 2017, computing power used to model and project storm behavior couldn’t seem to keep up with what eventually became a category 5 monster that appeared hell-bent on destroying Florida and everything that came before it.

The “spaghetti” models plotted on a map of the Atlantic and Eastern Caribbean regions factored in data on interacting pressure systems, frontal passages and ocean temperatures. Like a diagram of dozens of possible paths for a bowling ball down a well-oiled alley, the question persisted: will it hook or go for “Brooklyn.” In this case, up the Eastern coast of Florida, or in the pocket to the west.

And that’s when anxiety began to build, inversely proportional to Irma’s barometric pressure, dipping to frightening lows. Meteorologists called it a “healthy” storm with a well-defined eye. And with winds of 185 miles per hour immediately surrounding that eye for 37 hours, it became a record setter.

So it was that four months after we moved to Florida, following a prolonged drought in hurricane landfalls in our chosen retirement destination, we were in the crosshairs of the most powerful hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean.
Spaghetti Models

Within days our new governor Rick Scott declared a state of emergency for the entire state of Florida. We would much later be issued, and choose to ignore, a mandatory evacuation order due to an anticipated storm surge (we live 13 feet above sea level.)  On the heels of the recent hurricane in Texas, and with memories of Katrina, Wilma, Andrew and others, this storm was being taken very seriously.

We come from the Midwest. We are not strangers to powerful storms. In Illinois they come without warning in the Spring or Summer. The sky blackens with notes of olive green within minutes or hours, spitting iceballs the size of grenades or spawning demonic Cuisinarts with an appetite for high schools and trailer parks. The most you can hope to prepare is a trail of tears to the corner of a basement in hopes that the roof and floor above you get in the way of your being sucked out and thrown like a bean bag in a drunken game of corn-hole.

No, hurricanes grant you days or weeks to prepare for a beating. They broadcast their punches, but carry a toolkit that also includes uppercuts, fakes to the right and left, and a callous disregard for all things human. This leaves us disregarded as we decide to stay or go, putting up storm shutters lost for a decade under piles of crap in garages and sheds, and coming disconcertingly close to the point of competitive near-riots at local stores, seeking water, food and gasoline. The amount of preparatory work and the unpredictable nature of the beast carries with it an almost necessary element of procrastination. Why do all that work if it’s not absolutely necessary?

Steel Hurricane Shutters
We began to button up with a growing sense of dread as the spaghetti shifted in our direction. We sought out water, filled tanks with gas and installed steel window shutters that lay outside our shed in the backyard for nine years. We identified an interior closet where we would hide, with a twin mattress at the ready and bicycle helmets to protect our skulls while our limbs were crushed. This same closet has an attic access panel that seemed loose to me, so I tightened it up with eight screws, because one inch wood screws are known to resist the sucking force of 160 mile per hour wind in the absence of a roof. Yeah, right.


Submerged Kayaks
By the morning the storm hit, Port Charlotte was along a line on the west coast of Florida directly in Irma’s crosshairs. Many of our neighbors had survived hurricane Charlie in 2004 in their current homes. They were gracious beyond belief, offering us lodging, generators, food and last rights. We even went to a hurricane party the afternoon before Irma’s arrival. It was cloudy and a bit cooler than usual, the wind beginning to whip the palm trees along the canal between our house and theirs. I glanced with concern at our screened pool cage, our flimsy looking shed and the umbrella-like canvas covers over many boat-lifts. There were our two 12 foot kayaks, poised like bright red ICBMs on their launch platform, the back wall of our shed. I could only think to sink them in our pool. I wondered if WE could hide in the pool, but quickly dismissed the idea. Shrapnel-like debris is a problem.

Have you ever tried to hit a baseball at Major League speed in a batting cage? The first time I tried I heard a hissing noise and wondered when the ball would come. Now imagine objects becoming projectiles at twice that speed! Eventually we retired for the night with profound apprehension over what the morning would bring.

I was up at 6am. Irma’s predicted path had not changed. In almost total darkness I went out onto the pool deck with a box cutter, took a couple of deep breaths, and began cutting the largest row of screens out of our pool cage in hopes of preventing loss of the entire structure. I can only compare this to what it might feel like to take a sledge hammer to your living room walls in order to save the underlying wooden studs. It was a calculated risk based in part on hearsay, and also on the knowledge that our hurricane insurance covers only $10,000 for the cage on what might be a $20,000 repair. Factor in a $5000 deductible and no coverage for the screens – cut away.

To say it would be unfair for Port Charlotte and Punta Gorda to take another hit like the one Hurricane Charlie delivered in 2004 is a poor choice of word. But it would have been doubly tragic for the area and its long time residents. And there is no “fair” in wishing the tragedy elsewhere. But the unfortunate souls who live in Key West, Marco Island, Naples and Bonita Springs eventually took the brunt of the storm, serving to shred the eye wall in such a way that the storm quickly diminished by the time it reached us. We lost power for a week. In Florida. In the summer. So we were uncomfortable, but suffered little else beyond the loss of our refrigerated food. I compare it to a bad camping trip. But we got to stay in the otherwise familiar comfort of our own home with running water and flush toilets. Not that bad.

Our attention immediately turned from our own survival to that of our daughter and son-in-law, who had moved to Jacksonville two months after our move. Early preparations had us considering evacuating to a hotel near them. We searched hotels in Tallahassee, Gainesville and Valdosta to no avail. Similar to our search for water, we waited a little too long and had fallen behind the tidal wave of other evacuees, seven million of them. We eventually canceled the Jacksonville reservation and subsequently heard that its location on a river prompted evacuation of the hotel as well. We would have been evacuated from our evacuation. That left us anticipating a tidal surge that drained our canal and virtually emptied Charlotte Harbor and Tampa Bay as the storm approached, pulling the tide away similar to the effect a tsunami has on oceans.

By the time Irma hit Jacksonville, it was downgraded to a tropical storm. The dreaded surge never materialized, though our canal filled almost to the top of seawalls by the next morning. The worst damage had occurred elsewhere. We were among the lucky ones.

The islands that were so badly pounded by Irma prior to her arrival in Florida have been ravaged again. Puerto Rico, the Leeward Islands and the Dominican Republic among others may never fully recover. We are reluctant to consider ourselves veterans of a hurricane at this point, but we did have a really effective drill. We’ll know better next time. If the generator we buy is never used, it will be an effective insurance policy. Hopefully, we will be in the position of offering our home and help to others, as others so kindly did with us.

There are those who asked us why we were moving to Florida just in time for summer and hurricane season. On this first day of Autumn, I just shrug and smile and look out over a sparkling pool at a boat gliding toward the Gulf of Mexico. I take a sip from my drink and realize that, all things considered, I wouldn’t trade this experience for even a single blizzard. After a hurricane, the ground is still warm, the sun shines and the pool is inviting. In a few months it will be cold enough to freeze engine oil back home. We’re good.

Monday, September 4, 2017

I Should Have Known Better

We were ten years old, and the Beatles were coming to town!

My parents had recently bought me an unexpected gift, something that rarely happened. 
They returned from a weekend shopping trip with a 45 rpm copy of the Fab Four’s 
I Wanna Hold Your Hand. 

I still have the record and a turntable that will play it. I guess my folks were marginally caught up in Beatlemania, on the high end of the age spectrum. My friends and I were certainly on the young side. The phenomenon was inescapable. The early era of television was real-time, no time-shifting or later streaming. Sunday night on The Ed Sullivan Show found the entire family gathered in front of a musical debut that captivated the country, young and old.

On September 5, 1964, John, Paul, George, and Ringo arrived at O’Hare airport, flying over my house in Park Ridge. At least, that’s what we thought at the time. There are a number of runways at O’Hare, but the one that interrupted conversations, left the stench of diesel fuel settling over the trees on our street, and caused us to glance skyward, still marveling at the relatively new Boeing 707, flew frighteningly low over our neighborhood. So low, in fact, that we assumed the musicians would look out the plane window and see us on the ground below. And wave.

😎

To read the rest of this story and seventy others inspired by a town in Illinois, please consider buying Park Ridge Memories on Amazon. Click on the image below.


 


Or, if you like fiction and you're in the mood for over 50 short stories, please consider buying "Natural Selections," at Amazon.com.

Friday, March 31, 2017

On Thin Ice

Winter in Chicago is always unpredictable. Sure, it gets cold and an occasional snowstorm disrupts routines and even shuts down schools every few years. But ice worthy of skating when I was a child existed for a relatively brief time between mid-December and early March in the best of years.

There were no ice rinks where I grew up until much later. In those days, community groups cooperated with the fire department to flood a couple of smooth local fields when the weather forecast was favorable. And tucked away between my grammar school and a handful of sequestered homes was a small circular pond with a central tree-filled island. Skating there was preferable to the flooded fields. It was liberating to carve up the ice in any direction, not simply traveling around in monitored circles as you would in a roller rink.

Our pond was called Maine Park. When we were small it seemed enormous. Much later visits with my own children proved it to be not much more than a retention pond. But it was in a pretty, although by current standards isolated and creepy, setting.

Nestled in a suburban neighborhood, and being in such close proximity to our school, the crowd that gathered at the park for skating closely resembled the K-6 population. But young adults and parents with small children mixed in, serving as a buffer that prevented much of the clique formation and social structure inherent in gym class or recess. It felt safer.

The Park District constructed a temporary warming house each winter. A small wooden structure with benches along the walls, it provided a sheltered place to rest when tingling fingers began to hurt and toes became completely numb. I recall hot chocolate being available, but that may be a product of revisionist historical embellishment. Nobody really liked being in the warming house. It cut into our skating time.

On January 24th of 1965, Chicago was hit with a crippling ice storm that caused extensive damage, power outages, and generally brought things to a halt for a couple of days. The autumn just prior to this, Oakton Street, a thoroughfare through the north side of town, began undergoing widening from two lanes to four. The project was worked on as weather permitted, redirecting traffic to two lanes as the others were paved and sealed with asphalt.

Sometime during the height of the ice storm, those of us at home due to school closure discovered that the cordoned-off segment of the street, straight and smooth and flat, was thick with ice as smooth and hard as if it had been carefully conditioned for skating. And skate we did, at first tentatively while we tested the integrity and consistency of the frozen surface, and then with wild abandon, like birds launching into uplifting thermals over a canyon.
😎

To read the rest of this story and seventy others inspired by a town in Illinois, please consider buying Park Ridge Memories on Amazon. Click on the image below.


 


Or, if you like fiction and you're in the mood for over 50 short stories, please consider buying "Natural Selections," at Amazon.com.