Category Archives: memories

C.S. Lewis, family, home improvements, memories, miscellaneous

Footprints

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I hope there will be some relics of us left when we have settled that question of souteraines.

This book will take me several years to get through at the slow rate I’m reading it. I wonder if I’ll ever get to Vol. 2.

As my wife and are in the process of de-cluttering, we find a lot of things I can only describe as footprints: printed matter, souvenirs, old things we used to use but don’t any more. We are weeding through these. So far I’ve listed a number of things on Facebook Marketplace and some have sold. Not many, but some. And the amounts earned thereby are starting to add up.

I’m determined not to leave the mess for our children that our parents did for us. Two houses to clean out, plus all my mother-in-law’s stuff stuffed into our basement storeroom when she left her house for an apartment and more coming with each of her next moves. And this is after having multiple estate sales and yard sales in the past.

This drill set hung in the basement above Dad’s workbench. I could have sold it for more if it was all there, but the drill itself is missing as well as other parts.

My brother and I divided the tools and hardware from Dad’s basement. I took my share and stuffed them in our garage at our last house and faithfully moved them to our current, larger house and found space for them in the garage. A few—very few—I used. Most sat in cardboard boxes and tool boxes for the last 23 years, as they had at Dad’s for three or four decades before that. Some of those are gone. Some others will be picked up in 42 minutes [I write this on Sunday afternoon.]

When this process is over, a process that will take several years, I don’t know what we’ll have left. At some point we will have to consider our own stuff and decide what to do with it. But for now it’s enough to be dealing with our parent’s stuff. Our son is visiting us now. Before he came I told him to not expect much progress. I said what we had done so far was like cutting a millimeter off a 2-lbs. chunk of cheddar cheese. But progress is progress, even if it’s by millimeters instead of yards.

All of which is making me think of footprints, the footprints we leave in this world. Of course, as a genealogist, I’m thrilled when I find a footprint of an ancestor. It helps me to know a little about their life. The fact that so-and-so took someone to court in 1675 and won matters. Yet, I’m kind of glad I’m not looking at five pages of ancient court documents and trying to decide: “Do I keep this or not?” Footprints are good; a trampled wheat field is not. Hopefully the footprints that now adorn our house will, at such time as we leave this world, be just enough to be pleasing to our heirs, not overwhelming as we are now.

This box of odd clamps, files, and other tools came from Dad’s house in the box you see. I never used any of them.

The quote that starts this post I found in a letter C.S. Lewis wrote to his good friend Arthur Greaves on 10 November 1941. I’m slowly reading through Lewis’ letters. Volume 1 is 1024 pages of 10 point font. I assume Volumes 2 (which I also have) and 3 (which I do not have) are about the same. By “relics” I believe Lewis means the same as “footprints”. He hoped that he would make an impact on the world and that those who came after him would know who he was.

The word “souterrains” was a new one on me. Wikipedia defines it thusly:

Souterrain is a name given by archaeologists to a type of underground structure associated mainly with the European Atlantic Iron Age. These structures appear to have been brought northwards from Gaul during the late Iron Age. Regional names include earth houses, fogous and Pictish houses.

So it’s an archeological relic—a footprint of people long gone, something that tells us a little about how they lived. Lewis is saying that, just as these souterrains survived for a couple of millennia, so would his influence survive. He wrote that as a 16-year-old school boy.

At the moment, I think the biggest legacy I could leave my kids is to not leave a mess behind for them to have to deal with. Oh, there will be a few things. We don’t leave earth with absolutely nothing in our possession just prior. But I know it will be better than the three messes we received.

books, Health, letters, memories, miscellaneous, stock market

A Strange but Good Day

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Tuesday, July 28, 2020. A most interesting day, and perhaps typical of the jumbled life I live right now.

You’d think life would be simple, being retired and mostly staying at home due to the corona virus pandemic. You’d be wrong, however. I suppose the reason is in part that I have too many interests. Let me catalog some events from the day.

So far I’ve transcribed 2/3 of the letters in this box, and they run to 31 typed pages (the box is not full).

I woke around 6:15 to see my digital alarm clock flashing. Must have been a power failure in the night, probably momentary but enough to reset the clock. I got up and weighed and checked my blood sugar. No change in weight (still at the lower end of the range I’ve been bouncing around in). My blood sugar was 81, a good number. The day before my new doctor’s nurse called to convey the doctor’s follow-up comments on recent blood work. All was normal, except iron, which is a little low. Since the nurse didn’t mention the reduction in insulin dose that the doctor said, and since that reduction wasn’t in the printed office visit summary they gave me, I told the nurse what my blood sugars had been with the lower dose—the same as they had been with the higher dose. She said she would tell the doctor. Fifteen minutes later the nurse called back and said the doctor wanted me to reduce my sugar further by a couple of units.

But that happened on Monday. I’m talking about Tuesday. It was raining at 6:15, which meant I wouldn’t be able to go outside for my morning yardwork. Instead, I went into the sunroom and just rested for 30 minutes. I then got up, dressed, got my morning coffee, and went down to The Dungeon for my normal work. Everything seemed very normal. I read devotions, prayed, recorded my health info, checked my book sales, opened my stock trading programs, then checked my e-mail. And the first surprise came.

I had an overnight e-mail from a man with Royal Australian College of General Practitioners. They wanted to use a photograph from this blog for training purposes; would I let them know how to acquire the rights to do so. Wow, this was strange. I spent 15-20 minutes trying to figure out if this was legit. I found web pages for that organization and it all looks legit, except the man’s name was nowhere on it. He’s in an administrative position, however, and they don’t list any administrators on the site. So I sent him an e-mail to try to verify that it’s a legitimate claim.

Shortly after this an e-mail came from Amazon, confirming my order for $543 and change. Except I have no orders outstanding with Amazon. I compared the e-mail with the one from my last order. They looked much the same but there were telltale differences. So I contacted Amazon, confirmed it was most likely a phishing attack, forwarded the e-mail to them for investigation, and went back to my normal business.

Normal business on a weekday includes stock trading. I placed a trade and it filled. Good work. Then, instead of working on one of my books, I began transcribing letters from our Kuwait years. Have I discussed this before on the blog? I can’t remember. I won’t go into it much now except to say that morning I transcribed three letters. That brings the total transcribed to sixteen. In the Word file they run to 24 pages. I have ten more to go in this box, and dozens more in the main box. These are just some I found lately going through my mother-in-law’s things as part of our decluttering effort. They will be added to the large plastic bin (30 x 24 x 6) full of other letters from our Kuwait and Saudi years, all waiting to be transcribed. I also managed to do a little over a half mile on the elliptical.

That got me to lunch time. From that point on the day seemed more or less normal. I made a quick run to the nearby Wal-Mart pharmacy for a couple of prescriptions, had some reading time in the sunroom since the day was cool enough. The wife and I did our evening reading in an Agatha Christie mystery. Normal seemed good.

Throughout the day I was careful of what I ate, though I wouldn’t say I dieted. Yet, when I weighed Wednesday morning I was at my lowest weight in over two months. I followed a similar eating regimen on Wednesday and we even lower on Thursday. This was while reducing my insulin dose (per doctor’s orders) and seeing only a small increase in my blood sugar. Maybe my health is improving.

As I finish this post on Thursday afternoon, I have a generally good feeling about where things stand. A good felling and outlook is…well… good. Bring on Friday. Bring on the isolated weekend. I might even get some time to work on a book or two.

memories

R.I.P. Gary T. Boden

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Gary, when I first knew him at Cranston High School East, class of 1970.

I’m at the age where I’m much closer to death than to birth, and more people I know are dying than people I will know are being born. The circle is shrinking. Parents are gone. One sibling is gone. Four of the fourteen in my paternal first cousin group are gone. Of my high school class of 725 people, we know over 80 are dead, and maybe others.

From our college yearbook, as we went to different parts of the nation.

That number went up by one last week when one of my best friends, Gary Boden, lost his battle with cancer and went on to his heavenly reward. Gary and I went to high school together, and met, not in class, but running track. Gary was a hurdler, I was a middle-distance runner. We got to know each other a little during practices. We knew each other well enough that he signed my yearbook; maybe I signed his, don’t remember. This was the start of our friendship. To the best of my recollection we never had any classes together.

Then, in June 1970, many of us in my class went to freshman week at the University of Rhode Island. This was a two-day stay in one of the dorms. I don’t remember who I roomed with, but I remember Gary and I hung out together most of the two days. We played pool in the basement of the dorm (Barlow Hall, I think) most of the night, going to bed just before daylight when we knew we would have to get up in a couple of hours.

A number of us Cranston East alums hung out together during freshman year. Gary and I learned we had much in common. We were both boy scouts (he made eagle, I didn’t). My grandparents lived on the west side of Point Judith Pond—I spent summers there; his parents had a summer home on the east side of the pond. We could see each other’s summer place, 2/3 mile apart by water, 6 miles by land. During the summer Gary worked at the Burger Chef in Wakefield; I got a job at that Burger Chef late freshman year and worked there till my last semester. During the summer, Gary would just be getting off when I came in, and we had a chance to talk a while. One summer afternoon I swam across the pond and showed up at their house in just my swim trunks. We both liked sailing and had small sailboats, and occasionally met in the pond and then had friendly races (which I won, more based on the character of the two boats rather than the sailing skill of the victor).

Our gang of four, a mini-reunion in 2010 on one of my trips to RI. We would meet two more times before Gary’s death.

We were in the same suite together junior year, along with other Cranston kids. That was for just one semester, when I moved out of the dorm to live “down the line” with my grandparents. Upon graduation, I packed almost everything I owned in my Plymouth Valiant and moved to Kansas City for work. Gary went straight on to Cornell and earned his master’s degree. I eventually got mine as I worked. I called him a couple of times on his birthdays while he was in Ithaca, thus keeping in touch.

My life pulled me even farther away in the 1980s and we had few contacts. One was in 1980 during one of my trips back to Rhode Island. I saw Gary and Gayle during their engagement. I had learned that our common friend, Chuck Nevola, had planned a surprise bachelor party for him. I almost spilled the beans when I saw Gary and Gayle. She looked aghast (Gary didn’t see it), but I caught myself and we pulled off the surprise the next day. Six or seven of us took him to Ann & Hope as a ruse, then on to Valli’s Steak house for the real party.

A professional photo of Gary in his later years.

I’m not sure when we next saw each other. We exchanged a few Christmas cards, but it was in the 1990s, after I’d returned to the States and moved to Arkansas, that we began the regular visits every few years when I went back to the old haunts. Four of us got together for an evening: Gary, Chuck, Joe Farina, and me. A couple of times the wives joined us (though never all four wives at a time), but usually it was just us four, sharing old times and solving the world’s problems.

We didn’t exchange many letters. Once e-mail came in we communicated that way. Once Messenger came in we exchanged messages that way. If I could gather them all up it would be a fair number of letters. I hope to do that some day. I looked at our e-mails last night, and found many more than I expected. I see pleasurable reading ahead.

Gary was a lover of literature. I was a hater of literature—until I started writing books. After that, Gary became a reviewer for me, a beta reader. He read advanced copies of several of my books and gave me good advice on making them better. When he read In Front Of Fifty Thousand Screaming People he told me, “You set this up so well for the sequel”, to which I said, “There isn’t going to be a sequel.” He came back with five or six plot lines that he thought were not finished and would make a good sequel. I saw he was right, and Headshots was the result. I became a better writer because of Gary.

I could go on and on. A friendship of 52 years is not easily condensed into a single blog post. Let me just say that, though it has been five years since our last gang of four meeting, I will miss Gary much, for the rest of my life. I take comfort, and I know his wife and daughter do as well, that we know where he is right now, and that his eternal reward is a fitting end to his life here. He has now heard his Savior say,

Well done, good and faithful servant. Come and share your master’s happiness.

family, memories, travel, Writing

Back In The Saddle

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Here’s what I looked out on from my chair on the porch.

Or, rather, back in my chair, at my computer, with my books and tools around me, ready to write—or in the week, mainly edit.

My wife and I were away for a little over a week. This was scheduled, then changed. Our son-in-law was to go on a mission trip to Mexico and we were to go to Big Spring, Texas, and help our daughter with the kids. The mission trip was canceled, a fairly last minute thing, due to not having the minimum number of people necessary to make it happen. They decided to get away for a few days instead and asked us to join them. We agreed, with the time commitment being a little shorter than the mission trip would have been.

Fishing wasn’t what I most wanted to do.

The trip was to Ruidoso area in New Mexico. I had never heard of this resort area, up in the mountains. South of Albuquerque, west of Roswell, it’s pretty high up. We had a rental house at elevation 6950 feet.  It’s monsoon season, and we had rains all but one day. It didn’t really slow us down at all. Daytime temperatures were 75 to 85 when it wasn’t raining, nighttime lows were 57 to 62. Very pleasant.

We had fun at the Flying J Ranch.

The wife and I did very little planning for this trip. We were supposed to drive to Texas on Friday August 2 then drive with them to New Mexico, a five hour drive, on Saturday August 3. But at the last minute we left the afternoon of Thursday Aug 1, intending to pull up at their door after midnight. A wrong turn in Wichita Falls means we didn’t get in until 3 in the morning. Alas.

Ah, yes, jail the outsiders.

The trip was nice and relaxing. Our rental house was just the right size for us. Richard took his older boys fishing a couple of days. I’m not into fishing so didn’t join them. I wanted to hike. I went on four of them all together. One on Sunday in the neighborhood with grandson Ezra, 1.57 miles. One Monday at Grindstone Lake with my daughter, her two youngest, and my wife, 2.45 miles. One Tuesday at a Federal recreation area, with most of the family, 1.56 miles. One Wednesday (the day we were leaving to

Elijah panning for gold at the Flying J Ranch.

come home), up a hill near our house with the two oldest grandsons, 1.25 miles without a trail. And a different one back at that recreation area, 1.61 miles. None of them were overly strenuous, but had uphill segments where I had to stop on occasion.

The house with the red roof is the one we rented, as seen from the nearby hill we hiked up on Wednesday.

On Sunday we went to a church, not knowing it was next to one of our denominational campgrounds and that they were just finishing a week of family camp. So we attended a camp meeting type service. We then drove up to a ski area to ride the gondolas, but they had closed due to rain. I’m not a fan of mountain roads, but we did okay.

Plenty of deer came by our cabin, this one right up to be fed.

When not engaged with grandkids, I did a little editing in my completed books, did some reading (as described in my last post), though I found the reading hard going, too intellectual, I suppose, for reading in somewhat distracted conditions. Still, I enjoyed cool mornings or evenings on the porch, coffee and book or e-reader at hand, soaking in both knowledge and clean, mountain air.

I was on the hike too, but took the photo.

Ruidoso is a place I would like to go back to. We found out what was available in the Smokey Bear Ranger District, specifically the Cedar Creek Recreational Area, which included camping, picnicking, biking, and hiking. Several longer trails are available which I would like to hike. Perhaps we’ll go back some day, and make some more memories.

America, History, memories

Remembering the Moon Race, Part 2

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This was a great source of national pride.

So it was 50 years ago tomorrow that man first walked on the moon. The day before that the Apollo 11 Command Module, along with the Lunar Module and the Service Module, were picking up speed as the moon’s gravity started to have an effect. By the end of the day they would be orbiting the moon.

I had been watching the Apollo missions closely. Well, that is once they got off the ground. Apollo 7 had stayed in earth orbit, checking out all the systems. Apollo 8 flew to the moon and orbited it. Apollo 9 stayed in earth orbit, deploying the LM with two astronauts, testing its systems. Apollo 10, in May 1969, flew to the moon and orbited. This was a full dress rehearsal for the landing. They deployed the LM, flew it to within 10 miles of the moon’s surface, successfully docked back with the CM, and returned. All that was left was actually landing.

Word had it that the USSR was going to launch an unmanned probe to make a soft landing on the moon, and that they were going to get it there before we landed. This was a little drama as Apollo 11 launched. Would we make our manned, soft landing before the Soviet’s did their soft, unmanned? At some point, possibly during our flight, we learned that the Soviet craft crashed on the moon, 5 minutes early. That was exactly the amount of time their retro-rockets should have fired to slow it to the soft landing. The cause of that failure was thus obvious (though some think it may have crashed into one of the taller mountains on the moon). The result was we had the moon to ourselves at that time.

I remember July 20, 1969. ‘Twas a Sunday. The moon walk was originally scheduled to take place late. My memory, which may not be correct, was that it was to happen after midnight, maybe around 1 a.m. on the 21st. NASA decided to move it forward, to around 11 p.m. on the 20th, after a four hour rest for Armstrong and Aldrin. But that was moved forward even more so that the moon walk would happen during East Coast prime time. [Note: I can find documentation of only one change in time for the moon walk.]

I remember the transmission, the first words, the astronauts walking on the surface, taking note of their bouncy steps in low gravity. It was all mesmerizing. I consider this one of the high points of my life. It was a privilege to watch this on TV. Oh, and I thank NASA for moving the walk forward, allowing me to watch it in prime time.

History, memories

Remembering the Moon Race, Part 1

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Never having seen one of the Saturn V rockets in person, I can only imagine it’s size.

We are less than a month away from the 50th anniversary of the first time mankind walked on the moon. I was 17 years old, about to be a senior in high school. I have some clear memories of it, while other things quite famous I have no memory of at all.

I thought I’d do a brief series (maybe three posts scattered over the next three to four weeks) about my memories of it. I hope my readers won’t mind this departure from my regular posts, which are related to writing.

Those who lived through it will never forget the earthrise photos that came from Apollo 8.

Yesterday evening, after my wife and I watched a 1996 Sherlock Holmes movie, we switched to regular TV to see what we could find. It happened to be the top of the hour, and we saw the start of a National Geographic program on the moon race. That took me back to my first introduction of how we were going to get to the moon.

It was in August 1965. I was at Camp Yawgoog, the Boy Scout camp in SW Rhode Island, my first year to go to scout camp. That week is more memorable for what happened on Sunday, after Dad picked me up and we headed home, but that’s another story, loosely recounted in my short story, “Mom’s Letter”. But I digress.

On Saturday evening, all the scouts, scouters, and staff gathered in the amphitheater for a program. It was done every week of the summer. This particular Saturday the program was about NASA’s space program, specifically about how we were going to get to the moon.

What the speaker showed us that night was a model of the entire LM, not a cutaway like this. It was a complex spacecraft.

I don’t remember the name of the speaker or who he was with. He may have been someone NASA hired to get the word out. He did a fantastic job. He had models of the different space craft that would be used. The Mercury program was over by this time. The Gemini program had begun. He explained how that was for the purpose of testing vehicle docking in zero gravity, extra-vehicular activities, longer times in space such as what would be experienced in a moon shot. The models were large enough for us to easily see.

I remember how he described the many parts of the moon shot: the Apollo rocket to get them into earth orbit; the engine burn of the command module to boost them on a moon trajectory; the separation of the lunar module from the command module; the descent to the moon and landing; the burn of the LM engines to send half the LM back to the command module, leaving half of the LM on the moon; re-docking with the command module; and the return to earth.

That happened 54 years ago, but it is all very clear in my memory. I suppose it is because I found it fascinating. Prior to that, I had of course followed what NASA did. Each Mercury and Gemini flight had captured my interest. It was earlier that summer that the first EVA had happened. While I was at camp Gemini 5 was in space, the first flight to go beyond a few days in space.  So I wasn’t ignorant of the space program, but that presentation helped me to understand it better, gave me something to judge progress against as future flights would occur.

I’m glad to have such memories of the space program as it was during it’s early days, and am sorry for the kids of today that don’t have that sort of thing. Space travel still isn’t commonplace, but it doesn’t get news coverage as it used to. And that’s too bad.

family, memories, miscellaneous

What’s Up With August?

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About a week ago I remembered that I was right about the time of an anniversary—within a day or two of it. It got me thinking about all the things that have happened in the Augusts of my life. That’s not to say all momentous things happened in August. I met the woman I would marry in May, and we were married in January. Our children were born in January and April. All but one of our various moves happened in other months. Yes, the entire calendar is filled with important things, spread out.

But, it seems to me that August has claimed more than its fair share. Several of these events are wrapped around my genealogy research, so are not really a result of outside causes.

Here they are, in the order they occurred.

  • August 19, 1965: My mom died. I was 13.
  • August 2, 1990: Iraq invaded Kuwait, which was my expatriate home. We were in the USA on vacation at the time, and couldn’t go back as a family, though both Lynda and I got to go back, recover some things of our life there, and say goodbye.
  • August 26, 1997: My dad died, at age 81.
  • August 1998: I don’t remember the exact date of this one; it was toward the end of the month. Using clues I found when we cleaned out Dad’s house after his death, I made contact with my mom’s family. She was an only child and supposedly had no cousins. In fact, on her mom’s side, she was one of 11 first cousins plus 5 step-first cousins. I had my first phone calls with them in August, and met the first ones in November.
  • August 13, 2005: I was contacted by one of Lynda’s cousins, a first cousin once removed, to share genealogy information. I had this woman’s name in a file based on what Lynda’s dad left behind, but had no idea how to contact her. She found me based on my posts on various genealogy internet sites. This was a branch of the family I had little information on. Now I have it complete.
  • My half-sister and me in Branson, MO; Oct 2014

    August 11, 2014: A cousin in New York—one of those 11 first cousins of my mom discovered in 1998—contacted me, saying she had been contacted by a woman who had been adopted at birth but who, DNA testing revealed, was related. Looking at the data, it appeared my mother was her mother. I talked with the woman the next day and we began the process of confirming what the data suggested. Sure enough, DNA confirmed she was my half-sister. That confirmation came on September 1, 2014. Missed August by a day.

  • August 2015: No longer able to live on her own, my mother-in-law came to live with us.
  • August 2017: I’m not sure the exact date, but probably before August 10, using DNA triangulation, I was able to determine with great certainty who my mother’s father was. Before that I had a name, given me by my not-always-truthful grandmother, but had reached a dead end confirming it. That confirmation came when three of us had certain common relatives on 23andme. That allowed me to know what to search for, and in a matter of two hours I had found many official documents about my grandfather, including his World War 1 Canadian military record. That gave me 13 new first cousins (well, half-first-cousins, but let’s not be picky) and numerous other relatives. I haven’t put together the full list of my mom’s first cousins. DNA confirmation of this information came several months later.

So there’s the list. I don’t know how they strike you, but to me they are all momentous events.

But, am I over-thinking this? Might I not find, if I searched my life, that each month would have it’s collection of momentous events? Perhaps. For now, however, I’ll stick with August as the pivotal month in many of the years of my life.

Christmas, memories

Childhood Christmases: The Candy House

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Each year, in December (okay, a few have been in late-November), I post about some memory of past Christmases, specifically those from my childhood years. If I keep this blog up long enough, I may run out of those and have to go to teen years. Examples of some of those posts are:

December 2015: Progressive Christmas decoration

December 2014: Wrapping Paper

1953, perhaps first year for the house, before the tradition of adding candy was in place.
1953, perhaps first year for the house, before the tradition of adding candy was in place.

One memory I’ve wanted to write about, but haven’t because of a lack of photo to illustrate it, was our candy house. Other people do gingerbread houses; we did a candy house. My brother got all the family photo albums; one of his sons now has it. I keep forgetting to ask him for a copy of some of the photos. I’ve finally done that. However, as I wait for a good photo that shows the house in it’s full glory, I found this one in the photos I have. It’s from 1953, from before my memories, and it shows an early version of the house that would over the years morph into the one I remember.

Dad built the house out of plywood, put a simple light bulb base in it, with a blue incandescent bulb, and voila: you had a house that would be pretty with that blue light shining through the windows and door. All that was left was the decoration.

It is very hard to find Necco Wafers in stores around here. We have a stash we bought in R.I. years ago, begging to be put on a candy house.
It is very hard to find Necco Wafers in stores around here. We have a stash we bought in R.I. years ago, begging to be put on a candy house.

This happened either on Christmas eve, or maybe a couple of days before. Mom would make a large batch of white frosting (no store-bought stuff for us, if it was even available then). The whole outside was covered with this to represent snow, with the frosting dripped from the eves to form “icicles”. Then candy was stuck to the frosting. Necco Wafers for shingles on the roof. Red and green M&Ms for bricks on the chimney. Also M&Ms for the Christmas tree on the back. Gum drops to line the windows on each side.

The 1987 version in NC. I note we must not have had red and green M&Ms, and we used a white light inside the house.
The 1987 version in NC. I note we must not have had red and green M&Ms, and we used a white light inside the house.

The house was set on a thick piece of glass, which would also be covered with frosting. Spearmint candies made nice landscaping. Either spearmint or gumdrops lined the walkway leading to the house. The final thing was a candy cane stuck to the front door.

On to the dining room table it went. But, the decorating wasn’t done yet. All around the house were put various figurine. Carolers, snowmen, reindeer, someone in a horse-drawn sleigh. And, in the chimney, a right-sized Santa Claus, ready to go down.

Again, from 1987: our daughter and the house display.
Again, from 1987: our daughter and the house display.

The photo I give you here doesn’t do it justice. This was early in the candy house tradition. You can’t actually see any candy on it. In fact, I suspect this was the first year for it, when my sister was 3, I was almost 2, and baby brother would make his appearance two weeks later. They made a nice, white house—very pretty—and went with the external decorations. After this they probably thought, “Why not stick candy on all that frosting?”, and in later years did so.

How long did the candy last, you wonder? With three young kids in the house, you’d think not long. But the rule was: No taking candy off the candy house until New Year’s Day! And we obeyed. On new years day we could begin. I always went for a Necco Wafer first, then a gumdrop, then a spearmint tree. I’d break an “icicle” off and have that. It would usually take four or five days to get the house and “grounds” clean of candy.

Dad built several of these candy houses. I know he gave one to his sister Esther, who decorated it. I’m sure he made at least one more, though I’m not sure who got that.

Our accessories now go in the Christmas village.
Our accessories now go in the Christmas village.

Years later, in the mid-1980s, when we were living in North Carolina, I asked Dad if I could have the candy house. He had no kids in the house and no wife to prepare it. He said yes. I remember we decorated it one year, around 1986: same house, same base, same candies uses, different accessories. We have a very nice photo of our daughter next to the house. If I can find it, I’ll add it to this post. But, I believe it’s in an envelope somewhere in the house, never having been put in an album.

I thought this year would be a good year to make the candy house, for the grand-kids to enjoy. I wouldn’t even make them wait until New Year’s to take candy from it. Alas, I can’t find it. It appears that, from our many moves, the house and glass are gone. Did a mover steal it? Not likely. Did I give it to someone rather than store it when we moved from NC to Kuwait? Possible, but not likely. Is it hiding in a box, somewhere in our large and poorly-organized storeroom? Perhaps. If not, I don’t know what’s become of it. A piece of Dad gone forever.

Perhaps I’ll learn woodworking skills that Dad never taught me, and figure out how to make one; or find a kit at a hobby store. Maybe I can build a house for next year, and the wife and I can figure how to make it look half as good as Mom did. If so, you can be sure I’ll post it here.

Danny Tompkins Short Stories, memories, miscellaneous

Death In The Journey

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Death does in fact change life, for those who are left to mourn.
Death does in fact change life, for those who are left to mourn.

In my last post, I started talking about the life journey I’ve been on. Several times death has punctuated that journey. At least once that death was life-changing. I allude to this in my most recent publication, When Death Changes Life. While those collected stories are officially fiction, they do come from a point of knowledge about how a death in the circumstances described will impact a family.

In my melancholy moments, I often think about another death: that of Chemala Johanan Babu. He worked for me in Kuwait. When I changed companies there and became a Director of Infrastructure Engineering Services at Kuwaiti Engineers Office, I inherited a crew that was working offsite. We were partnered with a British firm to improve one of the interstate-quality highways in Kuwait. The crew we supplied was mostly CAD technicians. They worked under the supervision of the Brits, in their office, although they were employees of our company. I had no need to do anything regarding this team. The Brits processed everything about them, even their timesheets. All I had to do was watch their billable hours get added to our department’s.

I met them all only once. When I learned that I had this crew working offsite, since I hadn’t met any of them, I made a trip across the city to meet them. They were all names to me, who became faces, but faces I wouldn’t ever have to deal with. Babu was one.

Nothing to do with, that is, until the job they were working on came to an end, and these men (about eight of them) would have to be let go. It was a sad day when I had to write them all a memo, telling them their assignment would come to an end in a month, and that we had no other work for them, and thus would have to let them go. Sad, yes, but they knew it was coming. They knew they took an assignment that would end at some point, and that their employment wasn’t needed after that. Kuwait allowed workers in their position to shop around on the open labor market, and hopefully they’d find a job with another engineering company.

The day after that memo was out, Babu was in my office. I recognized him, and realized I had seen him one other time, at the National Evangelical Church of Kuwait. There were two large Indian language congregations (Tamil and Malayalam, if I remember correctly), typically each over 1,000 in attendance, that met very early Friday morning, much earlier than the English Language Congregation, all of us sharing the same facilities. I had seen him there once, not sure why the two of us were there at the same time. Now here he was, the third time I’d seen him. I’d met him once, and then seen him. Now seeing him again, I realized who he was.

He came to plead his case to remain employed. He really needed the job, he said. There was something about his visa that wouldn’t allow him to stay in the country unemployed while looking for a job. He would have to go home. At least, now 27 years after the event, that’s how I remember it. I felt sorry for him, and said I’d see what I could do.

I checked with the other directors, scoured my own department’s workload, and had nothing. I did, however, have the promise of a couple of projects that would start soon. One was another roadway project with a different British firm; the other was improvements at a university campus. Neither project was guaranteed, but both looked good. We would know on both in a couple of months.

I decided I could take a chance, keep Babu on staff for a month while we waited on those projects, and help him out. If those projects both came through I would have to hire someone. I reasoned that keeping him on staff for a month without billable work would be no more expensive than having to go through a hiring process.

I called the off-site office to tell him the good news. He wasn’t there; had been that morning, but not since lunch. He didn’t call me that day. The next day I called again. He hadn’t yet reported to work. Later in the morning I learned the awful news. The previous day he had been to the Indian embassy on some personal business. Taking the bus to near the office, he crossed a six-lane road on foot. Except he didn’t make it. He was hit by an Iraqi driver who was in the country illegally and driving without a license. Babu was killed instantly.

A day or two later I went to pay my respects to the family. He had lived with his sister and brother-in-law in one of the poorer sections of Kuwait City. I went there to find the streets packed with people from southern India, all coming to mourn with the family. One of our senior mechanical engineers was from Babu’s province and language group. He met me and brought me up to the house, through the crowd.

Inside, I met only the brother-in-law, as the sister was wailing in another room and didn’t want to meet anyone. He and I talked about what would be done with the body, if the police were notified, if there were any mourning rituals I could participate in (such as fasting). It was a good ten-minute visit, and I was off again. The mechanical engineer thanked me over and over for coming. I hope it helped them.

So, this was part of my life journey. Not a happy part, obviously. But, as I said earlier, it’s something that always comes to mind in my melancholy moments. As I get older, and am nearer to death myself than to birth, death will become more and more a part of my life. I’ll have many more chances to grieve, and to mourn with others. Yet, the story of Babu will stay with me, forever a memorable part of my journey.

memories, miscellaneous

Finding Beauty

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backyard-18-dec-2016
Our backyard; 18 Dec 2016

Tomorrow I will turn 65. There’s not much beauty in that age anymore. It used to be that you  could retire at 65 with full benefits. Alas, the “Normal Retirement Age” for my birth year is 66. And, of course, since retirement is more a question of money than of age, I figure on working till I reach 67.

This week my brother-in-law has been with us, as we prepared for the trip to Oklahoma City that we’re currently on. He’s staying behind at our house with his mom, my mother-in-law. He, his mom, and my wife, when they get together, talk about the hometown and who’s alive, who’s dead, where someone lived and moved to, who so and so is, etc. It’s interesting to listen to, but I can’t participate much. I know some of the names, as I’ve been in the family over forty years now, but I’m still not a full participant in those conversations.

Anyhow, at some point this last week, one of them (I think my mother-in-law) said, “What a dreary place western Kansas is.” [approximate quote] I’ve heard that before from her, and from her children. In the past I’ve said I find much beauty in the stark plains of Kansas, but this time I said nothing.

It’s true, however. I do find much beauty in the prairie, even the high plains, where the trees are few, vegetation limited, lakes mostly absent, the riverbeds mostly dry, and the towns ten to twenty miles apart. I got my first glimpse of the Kansas prairies in 1974 when I made the short drive from Kansas City to Lawrence. But, that’s eastern Kansas, which even then was seeing development. I had my introduction to the central Kansas Flint Hills area in May 1975 and western Kansas in October 1975. I loved both areas. They have a stark beauty. Perhaps, had I grown up there, I would feel differently. But as one who married into a Kansas family, I found it beautiful.

So, this got me to thinking about the beauty of the world—really of the universe—in its many locations. Having grown up in the eastern megalopolis, I was always amid a manmade environment. When I made my drive west in 1974 to take up my job and residence in Kansas City, I couldn’t believe the beauty of the endless mountain chains in Pennsylvania. Driving through Akron I found beauty in the tire plants on both sides of the Interstate, a different built environment than I was used to. Central Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois each had their own kind of beauty, mostly rural as seen from the (then) relatively new interstate highways. Missouri was an eye-opener, as for the first time in my life I saw frontage roads, seeing three or four miles from one hill peak to the next, and I found it all beautiful. A few months later and I added Kansas to the list of the USA’s beautiful places.

Years later came Saudi Arabia, Europe, North Carolina, Kuwait, several countries in Asia, then Arkansas. And in each place I found a different kind of beauty. The deserts I found beautiful. The dense hardwood forests of Arkansas and the mixed hardwood-softwood forests of North Carolina were equally beautiful. At some point I made the first of several trips to New York City. There, in the concrete jungle, I found beautiful architecture and other things to admire.

So what am I saying? That beauty is in the eye of the beholder? Maybe, at least a little. I think though, rather, I’m saying that you find beauty by looking for beauty in your circumstances. Those circumstances might require you to redefine what beauty is. Which is a good thing, I think. I’ve done that several times in my life, and may do so again some day.

I don’t know that I’ll be able to find beauty in every situation, every location. But I’m up for trying.