Category Archives: memories

family, memories

Puzzling, a Blood Sport

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All is serene as Elise and Ezra work with me on the puzzle. In the background, Nitwit is perched on the highchair to avoid Nuisance as she passes by.

On our recent trip to babysit grandkids and visit a few extra days, we brought gifts. No, not new games or nicely wrapped packages. We brought children’s stuff from our house to theirs: puzzles, and a few books (we brought two boxes of books the last trip).

They have no shortage of books of puzzles at their house, but, due to garage sale over-buying, we definitely have a surplus here. Lynda went through the children’s puzzles and selected a number—two boxes worth—to take. Needless to say, the parents at the other end of the gift weren’t exactly thrilled with more stuff in the house.

Do I sense a little aggressiveness here?

But, they have a good place to donate them if they turn out to be truly surplus, which they undoubtedly will.

When you have new puzzles in the house, you do them, right? We got little Elijah, 5 years old, to do a number of the puzzles at the younger end of his age range, and maybe one at the older range. We also got Elise, 8, and Ezra, 10 to work on larger puzzles. In the course of doing one, which I’m calling “puzzling”, I was reminded how in our family puzzling has always been a blood sport.

Elise has moved on to other things while Ezra and I get into the end-of-puzzle frenzy.

By that I mean that people get aggressive in trying to find pieces in a certain area of the board. They hoard the pieces for that area and try to keep anyone else from working the area. If someone does try to put a piece in, the speed of the puzzling picks up. You’ve got to go fast before someone else does what you want to do. If you see someone reaching for a piece you might need, you quickly grab it and try to put it in place ahead of them. This gets worse the closer you get to the end of the puzzle, when fewer pieces are easier to find and put in place. This is really when puzzling becomes a blood sport.

I first saw this puzzling behavior in our daughter when, as an adult on visits, we would do puzzles and the aggressiveness came out. Our son, not quite so much. Neither my wife or I are truly like that, though I don’t mind twisting people’s tails a little by pretending to go after their pieces, just to get them going.

So, Ezra and Elise began a 300 piece puzzle. Not all that big, as they have both done bigger on their own, but flat surface space was at a premium. They abandoned the puzzle. Then I, bored with reading the books I’d brought with me, began working on it. That brought them back, first Elise, later Ezra. Ezra and I finished it, him hiding a piece to be sure that he would be the one to put the last piece in. That is aggressive puzzling. Of course, I had threatened to do the same thing but then didn’t. I suppose I gave him the idea.

It was a good time. We didn’t get out another puzzle, but set the stage for future family puzzling on other trips. And when they next come here, I foresee the card table going up and a 500 piece puzzle coming out. Maybe two.

Christmas, memories

A Christmas Memory About A Song

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Christmas music has been filling the airwaves for a month now, though becoming progressively louder and more ubiquitous with each day. I enjoy it, both the sacred and the secular. The Christmas music we had growing up is still pleasant to me. We had the Gene Autry album, the Arthur Godfrey album, and a couple of others I sort of remember. We had primarily albums of secular holiday music. For Christmas hymns we went to church. I don’t believe there was any all-Christian radio in the 50s and 60s, so we didn’t get a steady diet of the songs of the season.

But this memory is about one particular song. I first heard it in 1964 at the Christmas program in our weekly assembly in junior high. I was in 7th grade then. At this assembly, Faith Farnum, a 9th-grader, sang “The Birthday of a King”. Faith was a wonderful singer and regularly sang at assemblies. It was the first time I had ever heard the song, and I’ve never forgotten it. It doesn’t get a lot of airtime at Christmas, and I don’t know why. In fact, I have never, in the 57 Christmases that have passed (including the one that is rapidly passing) since that first time, heard it sung live again.

As beautiful as the song is, and as simple yet rich as the lyrics are, I don’t understand how it remains so obscure. Whenever I mention it to someone, they have never heard it or heard of it. When I do a search for it, I find recordings of it by the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir, Judy Garland, Kelli O’Hara, and a number of others. It was once in the Baptist hymnal and, for all I know, may still be.

“The Birthday Of A King” was written in 1918 by William Harold Neidlinger. His biography at hymnary.org is as follows.

William Harold Neidlinger USA 1863-1924. Born at New York, NY, he studied with organists Dudley Buck and C C Muller (1880-90) …. He played the organ at St Michael’s Church in New York City. He also conducted the Amphion Male Chorus and the Cecilia Women’s Chorus in Brooklyn, and the Treble Clef Club and Mannheim Glee Club in Philadelphia, PA. He taught in the music department of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts & Sciences. He went on to study with E Dannreuther in London (1896-98) then worked in Paris as a singing teacher until 1901. In 1897 he married Alice Adelaide Maxwell Sypher, and they had a son, Harold. Returning to American in 1901, he settled in Chicago, IL, where for several years he was one of the prominent singing teachers. He wrote music for a religious mass…published a comic opera…another opera…a cantata…two song books,..[etc.] …He became interested in child psychology and nearly abandoned music. He even established a school for handicapped children in East Orange, NJ, where he taught his theories of musical pedagogy and speech and vocal therapy. He wrote several secular songs and edited a number of vocal songbooks, especially for children. He was a theorist on musical methods and education. He died at Orange, NJ. He was an author, composer, and lyricist.

Quite impressive.

Once I learned that so much music was available on Youtube for just the cost of listening to a few ads, I went looking for this one Christmas, and every Christmas since. I haven’t so far this year but will do so today as I go about my work in The Dungeon. I’m anxious to once again hear that beautiful refrain:

Alleluia, O how the angels sang. Alleluia, how it rang. And the sky was bright with a holy light. ‘Twas the birthday of a King.

Here’s a link to the performance by the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir. It’s a little different than the arrangement Faith sang to, but still good. Happy listening.

Christianity, memories, miscellaneous

R.I.P. Steve Skaggs

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Some weeks are more difficult than others, and for different reasons. The older I get the more those difficulties seem to be matters of life and death. That’s been especially true this week. This weekend, a police officer was killed in nearby Pea Ridge. He had stopped someone and they took off and ran over him, killing him. Then there was the collapse of the apartment building in Miami. They are still trying to figure out how many died in that.

A good friend, gone unexpectedly and too soon.

Another death, however, closer to home, happened Wednesday, the news coming by e-mail Thursday morning. A friend from church, Steve Skaggs, died unexpectedly. He was only 57. He leaves his wife, Sharon, and two sons. Here’s a link to his obituary.

I had been at our church a couple of years when I met Steve in the 1990s, most likely in the summer of 1991. It was a Wednesday night service, and I saw him sitting near the rear of the church. I’m not big on introducing myself to strangers. I have to flip a switch inside of me to be able to do so. That night I flipped the switch and introduced myself to him. He and I had a brief conversation as I welcomed him as a visitor to the church. Some years later he mentioned that the brief conversation made an impression on him.

What I didn’t know at the time was that Steve grew up in the church. His parents, Bob and Thelma Skaggs, had taken their family to help the new Pea Ridge Church of the Nazarene get started. They had worshiped and worked there for a number of years and were about to return to their home church. Whether Steve told me that that evening or not I don’t remember. It may have been later that he told me that.

Steve soon married Sharon, a young woman in the church who was part of the music ministry. It was maybe a year or so after they were married that we had them over for dinner one Sunday. He said it was the first invite such as that that he and Sharon had after their marriage. I remember that day as a good time of getting to know them better.

Steve and I had many interactions over the years. For a while we served together on the church board until I rotated off, deciding not to return. Steve continued in that service. He was church treasurer in the 1990s, bringing order to what was, at that time, something that was a bit unorderly. Eventually he was chosen for the position of secretary of the Church Board. This was a position of significant trust and responsibility. Steve served in this position for many years, still holding it when he died.

I was the coach of our teen Bible quizzing team beginning in 1991. Our second (or maybe third or fourth) year we had an explosion of teens joining, and it was more than one person could handle. Either I asked Steve to help or he volunteered. For two years we coached the Bible quiz team together. We made trips to Oklahoma City, Dallas, maybe Olathe Kansas. We planned together and worked together.

Years later, we were together on the Church Building Committee for the Family Life Center. Those were busy times, as there was much to do. That was in 1998-2001, and it was a lot of work. Then, a few years later, we worked together as leaders of Financial Peace at our church. I think we worked through two rounds of the classes, or maybe it was three. I think I was in the lead and he assisted me. But that was close to fifteen years ago, and right now I don’t remember who led and who assisted. Maybe we switched off.

After that, the interactions between us were fewer. We saw each other at church and chatted from time to time. Both of us led busy lives, leaving little time for building or maintaining friendships. Most recently we have both been on the 100th anniversary committee of the church. Since our committee meetings were strictly via Zoom, these points of contact seemed, in a way, not real.

Steve was what I would call a quiet worker. He didn’t seek the limelight, or to publicize what he did. Those times when he spoke to the congregation, such as when he represented the Church Board during pastor appreciation month, I could tell he didn’t do it to seek attention, but because it was part of the responsibilities he had. But he did it well. No discomfort at speaking in public, just quiet competence.

Steve’s death was sudden. Normal activity on Sunday; gone into the arms of the Lord on Wednesday. Today we will gather to celebrate his life, as well as to mourn his death. There was a hole in the church yesterday, but Steve is now singing with the angels, and has heard his Lord and Savior say, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Come share in your master’s happiness.”

memories, miscellaneous

R.I.P. Victor Turnage

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The corona virus pandemic may be in its waning moments (can’t be sure yet), but it has claimed the life of a good friend, Vic Turnage.

About five months or so into the corona virus pandemic I began seeing social media posts to the effect “Do you know anyone who has had covid? Do you know anyone who has died from covid?” The implication, of course, was that this disease wasn’t so bad and was being blown way out of proportion by individuals in the government who wanted more control over our lives. The longer we got into the pandemic you saw fewer of such posts as more as more people caught it and more and more died. Yes, it was then and still is a serious disease, worthy of being treated seriously.

For Lynda and me, an acquaintance in our daughter’s church died from it last spring/summer. Then, on Saturday a second person we know, Victor Turnage, died from it after a long battle in the hospital. He leaves his wife, Joyce, two sons, and four grandchildren.

They came to the Northwest Arkansas around 1995 or 96 from central Missouri. Vic worked then for Contractor Supply. They lived in Bentonville and began attending our church. Within the first week or two we had them over for dinner after church and we hit it off as good friends. Vic is about my age, was involved in construction, was interested in serving in the church, and so we had much in common. We went out for lunch often after church and were frequently in each other’s homes in evenings to play table games.

Such good people and hard workers. Vic will never be replaced as a husband, father, grandfather, and servant of God through the church.

When the church put together a building committee to construct a new family life center, Vic and I were both on it. We worked together on closing out things in the old church, on working with the architect as he developed concepts. Once construction started, Vic was our eyes and ears in daily dealing with the contractor. His knowledge of how construction took place was invaluable during that time. He and I and some others conducted the final inspection of the new building. Together we looked for those nicks and dings and bigger items that the contractor might have overlooked.

Later, he came to work where I worked, CEI Engineering, as a construction observer. He and I worked together on getting contractors to do the right thing on various development and public works projects. Vic wasn’t much on paperwork. which drove me nuts. I had to keep after him to fill out daily reports. But he sure knew construction, knew his way around a job site, knew how to handle contractors, make them follow the construction plans. The local business slowdown hit NW Arkansas in 2006, ahead of the rest of the country, and Vic was laid off by our company the next year.

After that, we kind of drifted apart. Life circumstances resulted in our having different goals and going in different directions in life. We saw each other at church, but Lynda and I stopped going out to eat due to salary cuts. Eventually we quit the evening get-togethers.  Whenever we did get together it was good times as always. During these later years, Vic was heavily involved in physical needs at the church. He ran cables, worked the sound booth, maintained just about anything and everything inside the buildings and on the grounds. He was the guy you would see bring a new microphone to the platform in the middle of a church service when the pastor’s mic died. When someone needed to climb a ladder to push the reset button on the ceiling-mounted projector, Vic would be the one to climb, as five of us down below would steady the ladder and encourage him.

The last paragraph really understates all that Vic did for the church. He truly had a servant’s heart and followed that up with action. If he saw a need he moved to fulfill it. He didn’t need to be asked. Yet, if you did ask him for anything he would do it. He had the gifts of both serving and helping.

Vic will be much missed by many people. We mourn, along with his family. What will help all who do mourn him is knowing that Vic has now heard those words from his heavenly Father that we all long to hear: “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter now into the joy of the Lord.”

books, family, home improvements, memories, Mom, reading

Goodbye, Books

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So many books to read, so little time left in this world to read them.

The house I grew up in had a lot of books in it. The secretary in the dining room, the bookcase with the glass doors in the hallway, and on shelves of books in the basement—some tied with twine, some in boxes, some in a row, and some under drop-cloths. I didn’t know what these books were. Once I took the drop-cloth off some and saw they were encyclopedias, published in 1900.

After Mom died and we three children grew up and moved out, Dad became an acquirer of books. He was retired by then, and he and his friend boyhood friend, Bob Tetrault, would get together once a month, have lunch, then go to flea markets. I don’t know what Bob bought (if anything), but Dad bought books. He bought paperbacks, hardbacks, on a variety of subjects. Seemingly mindless that he already had more than a thousand of Mom’s books, he bought more—and read them.

When Dad died 32 years after Mom did, and we cleaned out the house, I took the books. I sorted them into three categories: those it seemed Dad acquired, which were published mainly 1970 and later; those older than that that Mom had acquired, mainly hardbacks from the 1930s and 1940s; and then much older books, all hardbacks. These, I learned, had belonged to David Sexton, Mom’s grand-uncle, the man who took my grandmother in as a single mother and gave her a home. These are mainly from the late 1800s, though I found some that went back as early as 1829. I think my brother sold off a few older ones before I took the bulk of them away, but that’s another story.

Now we come down to 2020 and our new effort to reduce our possessions, looking toward that day sometime in the future when we’ll downsize and likely move away. As I reported in a prior post, I’m identifying things to part with and selling them on Facebook Marketplace—with some success. Dad’s tools, taking up space in boxes on shelves in the garage, are gone, at least many of them are. I still have a few. Toys that the grandchildren have outgrown are slowly going. We’ll give a number of them away to a needy family, sell others. Clothes that are surplus or that no longer fit (mostly due to weight loss) are being identified, sorted, and priced in anticipation of a yard sale a week from now. I’ve reported earlier about reduction in papers (cards, notes, letters), something that is on-going and not related to selling.

That brings us down to the books. What to do about them? Uncle Dave’s books are obviously keepers. Not many people have a set of Thomas Babbington Macaulay’s writings published in 1856, and another set from 1905. Not many have Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, Longfellow, Tennyson, and Kipling from the 1800s. My interest in Thomas Carlyle began because of his books Uncle Dave left behind. The many books that Dad collected we can obviously get rid of. A few would be worth keeping and reading. We’ll sort through them, see what’s good, and keep them. That would be maybe 1 or 2 of 100.

The books that came from Lynda’s dad and mom are more contemporary. The subjects vary from World War 2 to Christian living. I suspect most of those will go. They are not as numerous as the books my parents had, and are not keepsakes. The books we accumulated on our own are a little tougher. If we read them they can go. If we haven’t read them, are we likely to read them? If yes, we keep; if no, out they go. I suspect this will be 50-50. That will get rid of another thousand or more.

This one I will NOT be selling. My heirs can figure out what to do with it. I’ve not yet read “Little Women”, but when I do it may be from this copy.

What about Mom’s books? This is the hardest part of the decision. Over the years, at yard sales and when we briefly sold books on line from 2000-2003, I’ve sold a few of them. Now, however, I’m looking at selling maybe 700 of them if I can find buyers. At the end of that, I might find a good place to donate them, or sell them to a used book store or dealer for 25¢ on the dollar. This is hard, harder than selling Dad’s tools. Harder than selling anything I acquired over the years. Mom bought these books and, I believe, read all of them. It’s a piece of her I have clung to, hoping to read them myself and experience them as she did. Alas, if I could read two a month it would take me 42 years to go through them all. Will I live to be 110 and read these books to the exclusion of all others? Give up all my other interests just to read these books? I don’t think so.

Signed when she was 9 years old, Mom continued that practice all her life.

As buyers come by and take a few of Mom’s books, I look at the half-title page, where she always signed it and put the date she bought it. I look at that and come close to crying. Another piece of Mom gone.

But what else is there to do? My children don’t want these books. My grandchildren, I’m sure, won’t want them either. As Emerson said, each generation must write their own books. Very few people in our family are still alive who knew Mom, with a few more who knew about her. Someday these will all be gone. Should I leave that task to someone who comes after me, letting them make a hard decision?

No, I’ll make that hard decision. It won’t happen in a day, but over months, perhaps years. Slowly these books will go. I’ve pulled a few out to read, and will get through them.

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.