REAMUS

HAPPY NEW YEAR

2011-12-31T15:36:00.000-08:00

MAY PEACE COME TO THIS PLACE AND MAY ALL HAVE A HAPPY AND PROSPEROUS 2012

REAMUS

THE CLOCK STRIKES BACK

2011-11-04T18:06:00.000-07:00

Reamus has a number of rules. They are his own and apply only to him and the various mechanical devices and inanimate objects that travel the country with him and with which he occasionally converses.

Rule #87:

The day that the clocks “fall back” is the day to be home.

Because of the rather odd notion that light at the end of the day is better than in the beginning, Congress, in what little "wisdom" resides in that deliberative body enacted Daylight Savings Time. Over the years they have changed the time at which it takes effect and the time it ends. Two or three years ago, it was decided that the end would come as October left which was better than the end of September. To not confuse the populace more than required it has always taken effect at two o’clock in the morning on the first Sunday of the designated month. Thus, this year it ends on the 7^th of November.

Yes, it will be well after October has gone, as far after as possible and still be consistent with the law which,as with all things in life, has unintended consequences.

In the northern latitudes, sunrise comes very late. Last Sunday, the sun rose well after seven in the morning in southern Oregon and by tomorrow, dawn will occur after eight.

Some are old enough to remember the Carter Administration’s imposition of this time hoax as the norm with no change of clocks. The belief was that energy would be saved since lights would come on later in the evening. Of course the unintended consequence was that anyone living north of San Francisco was required to turn on lights if they rose before eight-thirty in the morning. After anguished pleas and horrific stories of little children standing on dark street corners in the sub zero weather in Minnesota and North Dakota waiting for the bus to school, Congress let us all go back to conventional time.

We forget. Someone famously observed we are condemned to repeat the history we forget. Therefore, we have again leapt into the abyss of “late” Daylight Time in pursuit of more light in the late afternoon and evening. The consequence can be seen every morning. They supposed it would not be as horrific as the year ‘round version and so the compromise of a March beginning and November end was forged.

We head home after an excellent trip to nowhere in particular and to places old and new. I can report that it was wonderful time. There was no rain until the last two nights. It seemed there were fewer people out here in the campgrounds but perhaps it was because of the more remote locations we visited,. There were still a fine cast of characters to spend time talking to and to wonder whether they were saner than me.

We followed El Camino Real before heading off into the mountains, sought out friends along the way and enough civilization to be sure the satellite radio would pick up the World Series. After all, if one spends time watching teams form in Spring Training, it seems only fair to see how it all ends.

There was a man from Switzerland on his bicycle who was in his 6400^th mile of a trip which had brought from New York via Washington D.C. to Portland Oregon who was now headed south to see what Baja California looked like before his year was up and he would return home. He was doing this solo but explained that he was supported by a network of Internet “TRANSAM” riders who exchange information on the best routes, places to sleep, and where free meals can be obtained. He was fascinating. He will be on my part of the southern West Coast around Thanksgiving and has been invited to dinner.

There were lakes being stocked with fish from farms where they will be quickly fished out by avid sportsman. Various cash strapped jurisdictions will be billed $13,000 dollars so that the sport can endure and the catch will be eaten with the satisfaction that it is a “natural” fish, not a “farmed fish” and for that reason tastes better. Humbug, of course, but nonetheless a source of enjoyment when watches the wide eyes of the fisherman who arrive before the nursery truck and watch them being “unloaded.” I will leave to you the value of such an exercise and expenditure which is repeated widely throughout this part of the country.

The drifters and grifters were out in seemingly smaller numbers. They were no less odd than last year. All were headed for new and warmer places, some for new jobs, and others for just another warmer piece of ground to call home.

La Coachasita is in excellent spirits and while in need of a good washing appears to have found the last 2,500 miles just a bit of mild exercise. A bath and an oil change will have her ready for the next adventure.

Reamus will pass on the oil, but feels otherwise the same.

We will be home this weekend to the usual wintertime activities. I hope that I finish this book. My fervent wish is that no new construction breaks out. A mid-winter trip to the desert is not out of the question. We will see.

More odd thoughts may be posted as random neuron firings occur between now and then.

Meanwhile, stay well, enjoy the “holiday season,” (I am reliably informed began last month and will last until January), do good works, and stay in touch.

A LONG AND WINDING RHODES

2011-10-28T12:20:00.000-07:00

The world of Major League baseball is full of strange, odd, and often wondrous characters. This year‘s candidate would have to be Arthur Lee Rhodes Jr.

Born in 1964, in Waco Texas, drafted by the Baltimore Orioles in 1988, he made his first appearance in the majors in 1991 (the 10^th youngest ever) and is now pitching for the National League Champion St. Louis Cardinals and is the third oldest man playing today.

The road from here to there is filled with moments of wonder a tragedy. Yet he will receive a World Series ring no matter which team wins. Until August 2^nd of this year when they gave up on him and released the elder statesman, Rhodes played for the Texas Rangers, the Cardinals opponent.

Rhodes was signed to a one year contract on August 8^th by the Cardinals which by the byzantine mathematical rules of baseball compensation are require to pay only 100,000 dollars of his 1.2 million dollar yearly salary. The Rangers, whom Arthur would now dearly like to beat, get to pay the rest. The rules also say if you play the substantial part of the year for the team that wins the Series, you get a ring.

To say that Arthur has “been around” baseball is an understatement. He wandered through the Orioles organization for some 12 years before he became a free agent and signed with the Seattle Mariners where he pitched for four years. He moved on to Oakland in 1999. There was little success there in the role the manager had in mind for him so he was traded to the Pittsburgh Pirates and on to the Cleveland Indians before the season even began in 2000. In 2006 he was acquired by the Philadelphia Phillies and released at the end of the year.

In 2007 Seattle offered him a minor league contract. He soon injured his arm, had a tendon replaced in his elbow in what is known in baseball parlance as “Tommy John” surgery. It is named for the first baseball player to have it done, rehabilitate successfully, and pitch well after having it. It is now so common that when it is done and the expected recovery time is 12 months. He never pitched in 2007.

In 2008, Seattle gave him another chance to make it back in the minors and he spent part of the year on their roster.

Arthur finally hit the jackpot when he was signed for two years by the Cincinnati Reds who went on to the playoffs and Arthur set a Major League that season with a record 33 consecutive game appearances without giving up a run. Now, in his late thirties, Arthur was still a very good big league pitcher and described by managers and fellow players as most likeable, hard working, and a man capable of putting his personal life on hold while he plays the game.

His nomadic wanderings took him to the Rangers this year where he pitched well, but he seemed to show his age, ineffective in a number of appearances in late July that led to his release.

The iconic pitching coach in St. Louis, Dave Duncan, who has been doing the same job for the same manager for 32 years for three different franchises thought Arthur might have some “gas left in his tank”, so urged his manager for all those years Tony La Russa to pick him up. At the time the Cardinals didn’t look like they would be playing any games in October. Somehow they managed to come from many games back in August and find themselves in the playoffs and Arthur was right there helping them get there.

As one wag in the press box has put it, if the World Series ended in a tie, Arthur would be the only one to get a ring. He still wants to win it outright but he says he’ll take it one way or the other. A man who has been in the game for 20 years roaming the back roads of the league, renting rooms in more cities than most of us have yet to visit deserves it.

There is only one other pitcher in the history of the game that has pitched more innings (900) than Arthur before reaching the World Series. In his first World Series game he got the out he was asked to get. The next night he wasn’t as lucky and in the book of his manager, who uses pitchers in "situations" perhaps more than any other, there hasn’t been a reason to put him in a game since. He's had a wonderful seat in the bullpen watching the rest so far. That does not make him happy, but he will shake that all off just as he has the surgery and more importantly, the loss of his son in 2008.

When Arthur enters a game, the first thing he does has nothing to do with baseball. He bends down and scratches the letter JR on the mound behind him before he warms up. Arthur says he will never get over the loss of his boy and that without the support of his daughters he would have left the game he loves after it happened. Yet now he sees it as having JR out there with him. “He’s right behind me,” says Arthur, “he helps me get through it.”

After tonight, Arthur has no idea what will happen to him. He would love to keep playing and teach the kids what he knows. Yet that isn’t up to him. When the winter turns to spring, someone may see that Arthur still has something to offer. If they don’t, he’ll move on, both in life which he knows is the most important thing, and in baseball, which he knows deep inside is only just a game.

NORTHBOUND

2011-10-17T20:46:00.000-07:00

Fall is here. It's weather is sure to follow. It has become custom now to head north and see how the coast looks before the coming rains and cold. We will be home before the clocks change and in the oddity of the calendar and the law, they are to change on the first Sunday in November. This year that day is on the seventh of the month, as far from the front end as possible, so it has added an extra week to the daylight at the end of the day.

It is good to be going. It has been a busy summer this year. It is time for a few weeks of Zen like moments and where better than on the Pacific Coast when the last of the warm weather is likely to occur.

All ask now where Reamus is headed and the answer is in the title. How far and and for how long is something I can't answer now because I do not know. Some look quizzical when they get that answer, some think it is an avoidance of revealing my true destination, others find it just rude.Those who know well of my peripatetic wanderings are often moved to question me further, suggesting various places I have been before as a destination, prodding me for a hint at where I will end the trip. The answer this year has been a shrug of the shoulders and a shake of the head. "Maybe," I say, "I'm not sure." There is resistance to a rhetorical destination, yet I understand why it is an unacceptable answer. Only a few go off for three weeks with no idea where they are going or where they will turn back, or even where they will stop for the night. I do. So there it is, not rude, just honest this time.

This trip will commence on Wednesday morning after the daily conclave of The Possibly Peculiar Men and Women at the local coffee shop where the usual complaints will be aired, truths will be shared, exaggeration may occur, and good fellowship will be found. The first night will be in the friendly and well travelled St Yenez Mountains east and north of Santa Barbara. After that nothing is certain except that Reamus, Juan,and La Coachasita will be home by November sixth since an empty campground at four-thirty in the afternoon is depressing when it is dark that early.

The time before that is a good one to reflect on the summer now gone, wonder at how the swing was broken, why the toy discarded, and hear the echoes of the laughter of summer's children. We will be awed by the migration of the birds, the color of the trees, the harsh clear brightness of the sky.It is a good time to be with nature as she sheds the clothes of summer and makes ready for the winter not yet here.

As we find our way, I'll be in touch. In the meanwhile, be well, keep up the good work, and be good to each other.

ONE OF THE FEW GOOD MEN

2011-10-09T19:36:00.000-07:00

A Few Good Men with Tom Cruise in the only convincing role he ever played and JackNicholson at his finest is an iconic movie to many of us of a certain generation.

There is a scene when Nicholson, as ColonelJessup, Commander of the Marine guard at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba,explains to Cruise, who is prosecuting a trial at which Jessup is a witness inthe loudest possible terms that he really does not want the truth. Theremarkable dialogue has to be heard more than once to be fully appreciated.First because of the way Nicholson delivers it, but more importantly for themixed emotions it evokes about the truth of what he says. At its root, it is anexplanation of what it is like for those that defend the country in the dark unknownway it is defended everyday that none of us knows much about and would rathernot think about very often. As Colonel Jessup says, “You don’t want to know thetruth. You can’t handle the truth.” No we don’t and no we can’t.

Last month, a good man died who did thatsort of thing. For years he labored in the obscure nether world of counterintelligence,a place even murkier than the Special Forces that few of us know of, most of usadmire, and perhaps some wish didn’t have to exist. He stood watch while we slept.He kept us safe. He was proud that no harm came to the country he loved on hiswatch. We are better for men like him. They give their careers withoutreservation to their country, their agency, and us, whom they serve for apaltry sum. What they get is not about money, it is their pride in a job donewell done and a world made safer by their efforts. What they ask in return is a nodof approving satisfaction from those who know what they do and how well they doit. He did it well, better than most, it is said, good enough to come tounderstand how the Russian KGB communicated with its agents here in the UnitedStates during the Cold War, before the Wall fell, before we all became“friends.” He found that code not because he was lucky but because he methodical,dedicated and good.

Years later, he helped uncover a suspected StateDepartment spy and suspicion fell on him when he eluded capture. He was accusedof being a “mole,” followed 24 hours a day for several years, his family harassed,his phone tapped, and his reputation and career nearly ruined. He was removedfrom his job he loved while “under investigation,” because the politicallyappointed egos in another agency of the government could not accept that maybeone of “theirs” could have done that which they accused him.

The parochial interests, the turf wars, andthe extraordinary egos that make this fragile democracy so hard to govern anddefend made his life hell. We have all heard of it but in this case it was a personalexample as to how it worked and it was not a pretty sight. Yet he endured. Twoyears later when he was cleared, he went back to doing what he loved. He didn’tsue anyone. He did his job and then retired. He told a chilling story, ofagency heads who mistrusted each other, the information they were given, and whenthey learned their mistake refused even an apology until those who ruled theirlives ordered them to give him one.

He will be remembered by many for hisextraordinary work and his extraordinary story. He will be remembered by othersas a kind, loving, and giving man, father, and grandfather.

To another band of men, he is remembered as one we spent four years with in College in the early 1960’s in an idyllicplace in the hills of northern Vermont. He was a practical joker without peer, whichearned him the nickname “Needle” which followed him the rest of his life. He wasfriend, and a classmate of the best kind. He and I shared a room for fouryears. He found a way to be at my father’s funeral and was always there when Ineeded him. I danced at his wedding and I promptly lost track of him after hissecond posting in the Air Force where he began to learn the craft ofcounterintelligence. I saw his image on my television when he appeared on “60 Minutes” and told the story of thehorrible mistake that nearly ruined his otherwise impeccable career.

We were back in touch fitfully the past severalyears both always assuming there would be time for that when we were less busy.

Alas, that time is gone. Brian J. Kelly, aquiet American who stood guard with so many others unknown to us so that we couldsleep under the blanket of freedom we take for granted is gone now. He wasburied at Arlington National Cemetery with so many other quiet heroes of histime.

Those who knew him in those halcyon days solong ago have our disparate memories of Brian as a roommate, a classmate, a world-classpractical joker, a class historian, and as a fine man.

Most of all he was a friend.

The full interview from “60 Minutes” can be found here: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/01/30/60minutes/main538650.shtml

REAMUS MOVES

2011-09-12T20:27:00.000-07:00

A short post to let anyone out there who might want to know that Reamus has changed his address.

When the blog first started, I wanted a simple URL, one that some of the few who read here when I am narrating my travels would find easy to locate in a search engine. I have never been pleased with "thereamus.com" and have always been waiting for the simpler "reamus" to become available.

It has. I've now had 12 messages from people trying to sell it to me for some princely sum. Let's just say it was a lot more than the ten bucks "Go Daddy" wanted for it and from whence I purchased it.

So, I have finally become simply"reamus.com." It isn't a big thing in the great universe of things to be remembered, but it makes me happy nonetheless so there you have it.

I will still let you all know when something is posted, but for now, look at www.reamus.com and you should find me, La Coachasita, and Juan, The Gnome de Plume when we are on the road.

We have been home three months. Major house renovations were done while I was gone which then required much attention to the final moving in to the new parts of the house and of course redecoration. A second novel has somehow found its way to an fourth edited version and may yet be published, assuming I have the will to do that in a few months and my two volunteer "editors" tell me it is a good story.

Plans for travel this fall remain unformed. There will be visitors here in October, so what trips I make will be short in September or longer in late October. My faithful iron maiden is waiting patiently for the place to go and the time to do it all to come together.

Until then, stay well, be good to each other and stay in touch.

FLANAGAN'S WAKE

2011-08-26T22:04:00.000-07:00

Those who read this space now and then know that the subject of baseball often comes up. This is not the place of a fanatic’s ravings about a manager’s wisdom or an umpire’s eyesight, but rather a place where someone passionate about a game looks at the human moments, the harsh realities, and frailties of the sport and the men who play it. Those things make “the game” more about work and real life.

Sometimes the reality of that life is too real, too jarring, too disappointing. This week there was another of those moments.

Years after I understood that I would never have the talent to be more than an adequate softball substitute, a man pitched for the Baltimore Orioles. Trivia buffs remember him as the last man to pitch in old Memorial Stadium in Baltimore, that iconic ball yard in the suburbs, striking out the only two Detroit batters he was asked to face to the delight of the 50,700 fans in attendance. Baseball statisticians would remember him as man that won the highest honor a pitcher can be given for a season of work, the Cy Yong Award in 1979 by winning 23 games and losing only 9. He received all but two of the votes. Then, on a very bad leg, went 12-4 in 1983 to help the Orioles win the World Championship.

The fans in Baltimore will remember him as an icon of the era along with the other pitchers of that staff who, with his quiet New England wit, could often make their genuis and borderline insane Hall of Fame Manager Earl Weaver sorry that he ever brought a subject up. They remember him as a pitching coach and a Vice President of the Oriole’s. In the last few years, after taking the fall for having failed in some way to make the woeful franchise better he became a television analyst. Those fans also know, as do the other pitchers on the staff who watched him, that he pitched to those last two batters in that famous stadium before the team moved downtown because he was the only Oriole on the roster who deserved to do it, and the fact that he did it so well shocked no one.

His wit and work ethic was well known from the days he pitched and played basketball at UMASS. He was drafted in 1973 and reached the majors two years later. He became a regular starter one-third of the way through 1977 and won 15, then 19 the following year. He was an extrodinary pitcher who suffered a serious knee injury in the 1980’s, but worked as a relief pitcher until he retired in 1991 His body of work included a remarkable141 wins in 18 years, many of which came after his injury.

He was responsible for one of the more uproarious arguments (and there were many) that the irascible Weaver ever had with and umpire. It was remarkable. Mike had walked the first man he faced (games in those days started at seven-thirty five). The umpire called a balk on his first attempt to hold the runner close—that is, he threw the ball to first rather than home to try to take the runner’s lead away from him. It was four minutes into the game. The classic 15-minute video clearly shows the clock during Weavers subsequent twelve minute discussion with Tom Haller, the first base umpire who made the call and awarded the runner second base. During the tirade, Weaver argued that there was no balk and somehow managed to assure Haller that he--because when he retired he would be in the Hall of Fame—knew that better than any of the umpires. He was told that he could leave for the night when he had initially run out on the field screaming epithets, leaving many scribes to wonder how he could be that angry four mintes into the game. Finally, having exhausted all his rather extensive vocabulary of blue language he turned and marched back to the third base dugout. He passed Flanagan, who had been standing there the whole time, he would say later, in awe of Earl’s antics. When he did he turned to Mike and said, “You were [hosed,”] or words to that effect. Flanagan never cracked a smile. “Actually,” he said, “I balked.” Weaver simply stared at him for a moment and continued his walk into exile for the evening. It is one of the great punch lines never heard.

“Flanny” as he was know by one and all was not only a great pitcher he was an intelligent and giving man. Sharing his knowledge of the game he loved was as natural as his New Hampshire twang. He once did an interview for more than 30 minutes on the way to use the rubber slab on the mound to one's advantage. Really. The quiet, reserved, even stoic New Englander most of the time, he could not seem to control his dry humor when he was with his fellow pitchers, Jim Palmer and Steve Stone, among others. Weaver tolerated their nonsense only because they all in their turn won the Cy Young Award and helped make up such a potent pitching staff that few others in the modern era compare.

After a particular galling loss in Anaheim one night when five Angels stole second base, Weaver had seen enough of the slow windups and inattention to the runners of his pitchers. He was so aggravated he ordered all the pitchers to appear at the park at two-thirty the next afternoon. He had them all stand at first base. Rick Dempsey, the regular catcher (the son of circus performers himself) stood in front of home plate and Weaver instructed the pitchers to leave the base and try to steal second but only after the ball left his hand. He positioned himself in front of the pitcher’s mound and threw the ball 12 times. Each pitcher tried and failed to steal second under Earl’s rules. Having believed he had now adequately made his point that the bases stolen the night before were their fault, not Dempsey's, the smiling, bandy rooster-like Weaver, all 5 foot 5 inches of him, bounced over to what he believed was a chastened collection of pitchers now standing behind second base near the kid infielder who had been recruited to apply the tag. He asked in his usual raspy half scream, “So, what have we learned today?” Flanny raised his hand and broke up the assembled group and sent Weaver stalking off the field talking to himself when he replied, “I guess we better work harder on getting a better lead next spring, huh Skip?” Much of what made it funny was the fact that pitchers in the American League had not hit or run the bases since the implementation of the Designated Hitter Rule in 1973.

That was the essential Mike Flanagan. The man who gave nicknames that players carried for life sprung from his fertile mind, the man who could shut the irrepressible Earl Weaver’s mouth with a few witty words. That is the man and the legend Baltimore remembers. Yet, on Thursday morning sometime after 1 AM, his body was discovered 250 feet behind his house. For no reason that anyone can understand, at the age of 59, Mike Flanagan, this kind, funny,and gentle man shot himself in the head.

The deed cannot be reconciled by those who knew him. His family and friends cannot explain it. Yet it happened. The world is a sadder place now for his leaving it. What torment he never shared with them, we may or may not ever know. He is now and will be always honored for his place in the history of Oriole baseball and as part of the warp and woof of the game.

We are left to wonder of the demons and harsh truths of his life.

"FROM THE FRONT PORCH"

2011-08-21T17:06:00.000-07:00

A BLOG TO REMEMBER

This week one of my favorite blogs closed up shop for reasons known to its proprietor. Whatever the reasons, they are good enough for me. We get to do what we want here, which is part of the fun. We get to stop doing it as well, which is the freedom of this form.

I have been reading “From the Front Porch” all the years I have been typing in this space. I was sent there by another photographer blogger who thought I, who travel the country so much, might enjoy seeing the extraordinary http://fromthefrontporch.com. I came to love the imagesof the Montana landscapes so skillfully presented there most every day.

I learned more of a cat (known to me as “my man Bob.”) a beloved dog Karl, a new companion “Bear” and the unique lifestyle of a computer consultant who has the freedom to work from home and enjoy life out of doors with a passion one must surely have to live to fully understand.

Over the years, the proprietor gave us the quiet snow-silenced moments of the hills after a blizzard, deer in the meadow, squirrels on the prowl, barns in the fields, and the simple beauty of a house at dawn on Christmas morning.

The delightful series of pictures taken in all seasons from the same spot returning to the house she loves called, “The Road Home” inspired urban dwellers such as me to dream of the quiet life at the end of it in the rural beauty of the place.

I will miss all that each day. I will miss the inestimable, self-effacing good humor, whether on a cold a dreary February day or in the beauty of the glow of the sun on the mountains she shared with everyone on walks through the woods, first with her beloved Karl and now with her new friend Bear.

Of course, too, I will miss my man Bob.

"CARMAGGEDON"

2011-07-14T17:06:00.000-07:00

Really. That’s what they are calling it. The main north south freeway (Interstate to those not residing in California) in Los Angeles that is the furthest west running through some of the most expensive real estate in America outside of Manhattan Island will be closed this Friday night until Monday at 6 AM because they have to take a bridge down. They are not blowing it up. They are taking it down.
In a city that lives by and in the car, this is now known as Carmageddon. Millions of dollars are being spent on contingency plans to get people from one place to another. 20 additional fire units will be on duty to respond to 911 calls. All police vacation and days off have been cancelled. Additional 911 operators have been mobilized. The hillsides that abut the freeway will be patrolled by officers on all terrain vehicles, the better to respond.

It is phenomenal how much television, radio, print media, and internet time has been spent for the last two months girding the loins of the city for this moment in its history. One would think it was a World War. Terrorist attacks have had less coverage than these two historic days in the City of Angeles.

Jet Blue offered, and immediately sold out, $4.00 plane rides from the San Fernando Valley Airport at Burbank to Long Beach on the other side of the closure. It will be a 45-minute flight, shortest in the airline’s history. All are being urged to “get to know your local neighborhood merchants” rather than venture to the west side of the city.

The cost is cannot be yet be computed. Yet no expense will be spared the public is assured, to be certain that the least inconvenience will be suffered by the fewest. City carpools and police escorts will assure that essential workers, such as hospital personnel will get to their jobs on time. Commentators on all the news channels predict chaos on the streets around the freeway as motorists seek alternate routes.
The total mileage of freeway closed?
Less than 10.
Really.

Los Angeles may be the only city with a mountain range running through it. The San Fernando Valley—which has been trying hard to break away from the megalopolis for years--is where most of the people live that actually work for a living or are married and have children or, alternatively, work in the pornographic film industry which, in an uneasy truce with those people, resides there as well. The south side of the mountain is the heart of Los Angeles, most of its institutions of higher learning and its medical community, and of course Hollywood and access to The Malibu Beach Colony where many of the folks in that industry live.

For 48 hours, beginning at midnight tonight if you live in the “Valley” and work on the south side of town, you can’t get there from here as the man once said. You, of course, have to have a weekend shift to work to be truly affected by all this, but they will spare no expense to be sure those who do and those with fewer brains than a chicken that will go out there anyway will be safe.

The people on skid row, almost proudly known as “The Capital of Homeless America” will have no more to eat and no better place to sleep because of the millions spent. Schools will still lay off teachers this fall, potholes will go unfilled, gangs will fight, people will die violently at the same rate as any other weekend, but the people who think they need to traverse those 10 miles of I-405 will be well served and well protected. The press will be there to cover it live from beginning to end as if it were the Oscars to be sure that they are. After all this is Hollywood, right?

Now isn’t this a great country, this America?

A RUDE ADIEU

2011-06-21T19:50:00.000-07:00

Kansas was not nice to me at the end. The last three days were marked by thunderstorms, then hail the next night, vicious winds and torrential rains on the last complete with tornado sirens. The power in the City of El Dorado and the park (That is El DorAdo there, sort of a kin to "AmblAnce" and other odd A's in the mid-western colloquial style) went off. It was about 4 AM when it did. The refrigerator of course was working on electric and not the optional Propane when it happened. Why not? After all, when we went to bed it was a lovely night.

Once I hauled myself up to fix that I decided I might as well start screwing down all that moves, get unhooked from the land lines at first light and get on the on the road. I pulled out about 6:00 AM and enjoyed a peaceful and lonely drive across the gypsum "hills" of western Kansas on an overcast morning. Kansas is essentially closed on Sundays so until the church goers appeared I had the roads to myself and found the next scheduled stop about noon. The NOAA radio said it would be 102 there with a chance of rain later so, with another five hours available, and the temperature beyond even the pale of mad dogs and Englishman, I soldiered on for an additional 350 miles to the place I was supposed to be on Monday. I stopped at a favorite side of the road campsite in Tucumcari and found the temperature there less than 100 but the much advertised winds of New Mexico were present. However, I had gained both a day on the schedule of the worst part of the trip and and hour on the clock. The good people of New Mexico are wise enough to adopt daylight time unlike there less informed neighbors to the west.

I vowed the next day not to drive any more than I had originally planned. One day of over 500 miles seemed sufficient. So I had breakfast at the diner, read the paper and left in what still seemed a cool day. Climbing off the desert floor to pass through Albuquerque and on to a small and uninteresting RV park at Grants, NM. The altitude of 6500 feet made the day a delight, The air required no conditioning and a good book was finished in the early evening. Cable Television was available and I learned it would be 42 degrees when the sun rose there on the first day of summer. Quite a difference, but one that would last only as long as the altitude was maintained. As I passed through Gallup and into Arizona and Pacific Daylight Time I was descending again and reached Flagstaff AZ at either 2:30 PM or 3:30 PM depending on which clock one looked at for assurance.

The road between was a grinding bore, a landscape of the moon by comparison to my previous bucolic journeys on the National Highway and the farm roads of Missouri and Illinois. There is a meteor crater one can go look at if one wishes, there are ruins from the earliest human settlers here about which little is still known that are best seen in the early spring or late fall when the temperatures are livable. There is also between Grants and Two Gun, AZ a higgily- piggily village of squalor at the side of the Interstate that should make you sad to be related to the people who put the Hopi, Zuni, and Navajo out here to suffer the indignity they now enjoy. The grinding poverty from there to the end of the state and the beginning of the Mojave is occasionally interrupted by a perky town like Winslow and Flagstaff singing the praises of the famous Route 66, "America's Road" as they would have it and where the pale faces settled for there own reasons and live in what can only look to those who reside between the Sante Fe Railroad Tracks and Interstate 40 as the lap of luxury. It is a sad journey, a figurative walk along the trail of tears that brought them to this place, these noble and, in most cases, gentle people.

Tomorrow I will saddle up as early as sleep will allow to pass through Needles CA, a place no one should have to live, but where there is a remarkably good place to eat breakfast. Then it is south on U.S. 95 past Twenty-Nine Palms where every combat Marine that ever served has been taught to do scary things, on to Desert Center which is simply that, then Riverside, down Interstate 15 to home.

The journey will have covered more than 7,500 miles by then and I for one will be glad it is over. Juan agrees and La Coachasita will be very relieved, although she returns in excellent condition for a machine of her age.

I look forward to a day of high 70's. no rain or threat of it, no sirens to warn of impending doom, no smoke to remind of man's carelessness with his planet.

There are things there waiting to be done, but as always as my journey ends in this overheated wasteland this time of year--a place capable of remarkable beauty at other times--I will be glad to see the people and places of home.

Until next time, stay well, do good works, and stay in touch.

IT IS JUNE-TIME TO GO HOME

2011-06-16T14:23:00.000-07:00

We have been enjoying a reasonable paced and stress free drive across Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois for two weeks resting at the idyllic reconstructed village of New Salem outside of Springfield Illinois at the end for four days. The Illinois River is nearby. It is more nearby than usual since it was three feet above flood stage when I pulled out in the rain and fog on Monday.

After the family Reunion to celebrate of a member of the family’s law school graduation and not coincidentally her engagement the night before, we caught up with a few old friends, suffered the 95-degree of Washington D.C.’s suburbs, and then went north in search of the Pennsylvania section of the Lincoln Highway, now U.S. 30. Much has been done to restore some of the older surviving sections and the road itself is a wonderful drive through the very green countryside. We passed through Gettysburg, more quickly perhaps than we had wanted since the heat was still with us. As we pressed on West, Chambersburg, site of a much less famous battle hove into view. The cooler hills of the western part of the state were beckoning so we stopped for four days short of Pittsburgh at Laurel Hill State Park. It was quiet, full of wildlife, visited occasionally by rain at night. The humidity lifted in the Park. It was originally constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930’s as are so many of these wonderful leafy wildlife filled places. Three days of cool weather, much bike riding, and a few campfires with nice neighbors put me back in the “camping” mode. As we left for Ohio in a drizzle and after a night of horrific lightning and thunder. Somehow, it seemed the right time to go.

We followed U.S. 30 a bit further and then the “National Road”, U.S. 40. Unlike the Lincoln Highway, the national road was a government funded project which was seen as the overland equivalent of the Erie Canal in its importance in moving goods the markets in the East. Congress appropriated $30,000 to build a road to the West and the bill was signed by President Thomas Jefferson in March or 1806. Once Ohio had been admitted to the Union there were calls for the road to be built. It was, by any standard a modest effort and eventually only reached the middle of Indiana but it was the start of a network of roads throughout the states as the nation looked and headed west.

There are two significant things about it. It left Washington following “Braddock Road” which was the name of a British General and still a heavily traveled suburban road in Virginia. It was started in Cumberland Maryland with workers moving both east and west and often referred to as the Cumberland Road which always confuses me if no one else. Second, the largest problem 200 years ago was wagon ruts and mud. In the early 1800s, a Scottish engineer named John Loudon Mac Adam became using crushed rock as the base for the road which could stand up to weather and wagon traffic. Such roads were known as “macadam roads.” The method was applied to the National road, done without any machinery, rocks broken by the strong backs of men. To see reclaimed sections of it today is to appreciate the extraordinary difficulty of the task of sledge hammering, raking and placing the stone and then compacting it by rollers. into place.
The National Road slowly continued westward, and eventually reached Vandalia, Indiana in 1839. Plans existed for the road to keep going all the way to St. Louis, Missouri, but as it seemed that railroads would soon supersede roads, funding for the National Road was not renewed.

The Lincoln Highway was a semi-private endeavor, documented a here on an earlier trip.: http://www.thereamus.com/2009/06/americas-road-my-quest-for-good-weather.html
It was one man’s vision to have a road run from Times Square to the West Coast in one continuous paved wonder. It was done much later and eventually finished. It too these days is being restored in some places, particularly Pennsylvania and Ohio. U.S. 30 exists across the country still and is a peaceful alternative to noisy Interstates and plastic buildings as it takes you often through the middle of many small towns. We passed the hometowns of Lillian Gish, Glenn Miller and a few other that a few of my older readers may remember.

Should you travel the National Road through Ohio, you will pass through Marion, the place where President Warren G. Harding was born and died. His homes as well as his tomb are memorials there. I went through on a Monday with the hope of seeing the both. This famous—many would say infamous—President who presided over as so many scandals during his administration (including the Teapot Dome, a massive oil manipulation) that he still consistently finishes near the top of the list of worst Presidents. I would only add that his time in the White House may have been much like trying to visit his memorials on Monday. There was no one there. They are closed, which may say much about his popularity and his Presidency.

The second place, just south of Lima Ohio in Wapakoneta is the Space Museum that exhibits many of the artifacts of the first man to step on the moon, Neil Armstrong. Incredibly to me, was the “Hall of Fame” which includes 42 Astronauts born in the state. They include Judith Resnick, killed in the Challenger disaster that took the "teacher in space," Christie McAuliffe as well in January 1986. Sally Ride, the first woman ever to orbit the earth was born there. Most have flown in the Space shuttle but a few were among the earlier space pioneers such as John Glenn, the first man in space aboard Friendship Seven who also became the oldest ever in space when he flew as a mission specialist on a Shuttle mission at the age of 76. I would doubt any other state could match it. Ohio, once known as the “cradle of Presidents” is also the cradle of space explorers. Except for the exceptionally poor mannered help, it is an interesting place of memories, perhaps of a more outward looking, “can do” America on this warm Monday afternoon in June.

Illinois brought cooler weather, excellent camping for the next seven days or so, and a hiccup in the life of La Coachasita, her first of the trip. Near Danville IL is one of the prettier state parks I know. It is also, as the good ones often are a wildlife reserve. The deer have just had their young three to four weeks ago here and the woods are rich with small fawn and nervous doe trying to protect their young from the den of coyotes present here and other predators. As I entered after a long days drive, I saw a fox, part of a large band here, crossed the entrance road in front of me. It seemed a harbinger of my three day stay. In the early evening, in the places where the park has let the grass grow longer, both because they want to give the wildlife better habitat and because the meadows are so vast it has become economically prohibitive to cut it all both of these and the ubiquitous raccoons and rabbits are found in abundance. The Rangers now cut trails through the grass allowing a far more natural experience. It seems that necessity is still the mother of invention since the effect is both pleasing to the eye and has had the desired effect for the fauna that inhabit this quiet and vast place.

Eschewing the likely route of Interstate 70, U.S. 136 provided a pleasant drive across the mid-state area to “New Salem” the now former town at Petersburg near Springfield IL. Aside from the swarming gnats that could drive one mad at sunset, it was a pleasant stop, with rain coming the first day and the last night. There was a festival in the village over the weekend which brought out the period dressed “people” of New Salem, a knowledgeable crowd who recruit youth with a vigorousness that is impressive. One meets many college students from all sorts of majors “interning’ as experts on the ways and crafts of old New Salem. The excavation of the village was done many years ago when it became known that it was the place Abraham Lincoln—who for all practical purposes is the patron Saint of the State of Illinois—returned to run a store after his time as a soldier in the Indian Wars. As many buildings as could be have been replicated as they would have been in the early 1800s. They grow vegetables and spices, feed livestock, spin yarn and make candles all summer so that we might learn something of how it was done.

The park includes the campground and a picnic area as well as an outdoor theater. The weekend I was there, I was fortunate enough to see Shakespeare in the Park as Romeo and Juliet was the offering by a young talented company. The next night down the road there was a Blue Grass Festival not as well attended but easily as well performed.

My neighbors included “Buck” Raglan, who is a retired farmer and inventor of a number of construction innovations for livestock enclosures and the locks and hasps that hold them. He visited Wales some years ago and met the current Earl of Raglan. He relates the story that he presented the Earl with a jacket from his company and was as surprised as the Earl when they both discovered that they were made with “Raglan sleeves” which you fashionistas know are different from the more common sleeve seams. The Earl was delighted that he was carrying on the family tradition as the sleeve derives its name from their ancestors. Buck was as proud of that as he was to show off his new dog “Shadow,” a rescued Beagle/ Terrier mix that is the only dog I have given serious consideration to kidnapping on the road. She is a very friendly sort, known as Shadow because wherever Buck goes, she is sure to follow.

Three young men and their families were the closest neighbors. They were all farmers from near Springfield. They did it full time and were college graduates in Agronomy. One was a “tenant” farmer and raised beef cattle. Another farmed the same land that has been in his family for three generations. The third was new to it and seemed less committed and content. Only time will tell how he fares. They were as pleasant and likable company as were their families and a great help when La Coachasita decided to have her nervous breakdown on a Saturday morning. There is something to be said about camping near locals who know all about machinery and local parts sources.

We left on Monday in the pouring rain and fog which had little effect on the gnats but provided me with an additional opportunity to don the full rain suit as we visited the used water facility on the way out. Somewhere in mid Missouri we achieved frontal passage and passed into warm sunlight and a far less humid day. We reached Kansas with a long driving day, plugged in and went to sleep. The next day was, for Kansas, remarkable for its lack of wind, humidity and heat. Once again we took to the back roads to reach El Dorado State Park in mid-Kansas. With bad weather predicted for the next day, I decided to make this the last long stop of the trip. It is a park of vast dimensions. There is a lake of the same name, 1100 campsites (a number that boggles the mind) 40,000 acres dedicated to recreation here in the area known as the Flint Hills area of Kansas. It is crossed by many biking and hiking trails as well. 100 degree heat was expected today, yet instead we woke to tornado warnings, 30 mph winds and slashing rain and that may have been Toto that few by the camper in the early morning. The heat will come tomorrow with the wind. After all, this is Kansas.

From here we will go quickly home. I am reliably informed that the renovations of the house will be completed on Friday except for minor matters. From the pictures I have seen I no longer recognize my bedroom and bath. So it will be a stop at Meade KS followed by Tucumcari, NM and the two stops more before home. It is too far to drive in too few days, but the heat and the New Mexico fire means there is not much left I want to do now.

It has been a wonderful peaceful trip of 6,200 plus miles thus far, with few problems and many new places and friends. A trip back to the East may not be in my future again, but we will see what spring will bring and how Juan, La Coachasita, and I all feel by then. As for the fall, we will think of that later this summer.

And so it goes.

SANTIAGO RESIGNS

2011-05-30T13:46:00.000-07:00

At The 4,204 mile mark of the trip, one of my more curious neighbors decided he needed a closer look at my new traveling companion. He grasped his coned hat, lifted him from the dashboard and…dropped him. With nary a whimper Santiago was now a double amputee. Without a leg to stand on as it were, he was no longer fit for guard duty. He has been ministered to furiously, casts were applied, prosthesis was invented, but alas, yet he has failed to respond and thrive. As we leave Virginia now and the family reunions behind he will remain here having asked in a touching letter of resignation to retire from his duties as vigilant guardian of La Coachasita and the rest of us and remain here on limited duty.

His wish has been granted and he has, with some repair, now been raised upright once again. He will be tended to and stand watch over my nephew and his family. The grounds are vast and a place has been found in the garden where he can watch nearly unobserved. It pleases my great nieces that he will remain behind to be here and greet them as they come home every day. I am happy that he has found a new home and that he was good enough to recommend a more than suitable replacement in his Uncle, Juan, who I am told while perhaps lacking Santiago’s jaunty demeanor has his own style and way. His bona fides are impressive and references excellent. He seems a good fit to see us home.
That is now Gnome 1st Class J.W. Street on the right side of the page. He will be off limits to neighbors, and work from the safety of the dashboard. Further requests for closer inspections of my companion will be courteously denied.
I hope the Memorial Day Weekend found you in pleasant company and good weather. While rain has been threatened here, none appeared only 90-95 degree heat and humidity which descended on Friday and has oppressed us as an overweight person sitting in a canvas camp chair.
We are off to continue our excellent adventure tomorrow, turning West now uttering a silent prayer to St Elmo that the weather back will be kinder than the weather coming in. Our initial destination will be a quick pass at Gettysburg and its battlefield, a place known well to me and which was the subject of one of my first posts on this blog. Then it will be semi linear through southern Pennsylvania with two or three stops along the way. We will not head north this trip but travel on through Ohio, southern Illinois and whatever comes next.
Be well, continue your good works, and stay in touch

LIGHT TO NO POSTINGS AHEAD

2011-05-27T06:07:00.000-07:00

Reamus notes:

Family visits and other matters for a week or so, will posts will resume when he turns west again. Santiago has taken a bad fall and needs prosthetic work on his feet.
La Coachasita is well, happy and very dirty. It is 90 degrees here in the Nation's Capital. We are not amused.
See you all in June.

Peace.

ANTIETAM

2011-05-24T12:53:00.000-07:00

Antietam. It is a generic Algonquin Indian word for “swift water.” But to the Americans that met at the creek by that name in Sharpsburg Maryland in Septemer of 1862 it meant horror and more deaths in one day than any battle in any war ever fought by this country. It was also the end of the “Maryland Campaign” of General Lee, the practical end of a career for General George McClellan, USA, the only battlefield that Lincoln ever visited, the momentary high he used to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, the beginning of political “spin,” and a missed opportunity to end the Civil War three years earlier than it did.

What it was assuredly not was a “great victory” by the Union Army although portrayed that way by the Generals, Lincoln, and his advisors. Lincoln called it that. because he desperately needed a victory after McClellan had lost both battles at Manassas. McClellan thought his strategy beyond question. Certainly beyond the question of that rube lawyer in the White House. That he let Lee and the Army of Virginia to slip away across the Potomac, even in the shape it was in, meant that the war would go on while he rested and resupplied is troops. When asked why he was not in pursuit of Lee, he replied that his horses were tired and he was foraging for replacements. Lincoln’s tart reply was to ask what they had been doing since the battle that could possibly make them tired.

Today it is a large peaceful place in the Maryland countryside with monuments to those who fought here, a cemetery where the Union dead are buried, and a battlefield well preserved that makes you shake your head at the stupidity of it all. In the early morning of September 17, 1862, one hundred thousand soldiers entered a battle that would end at six that evening. By then, 23,000 of them would be dead, wounded or missing. Some units lost sixty percent of their force. Yet McClellan held 30,000 soldiers in reserve and the lines of each Army had moved only five miles south than before it all started in the early morning light.

Reading the history of the battle tells of many firsts here. Clara Barton “The Angel of the Battlefield,” who founded the Red Cross treated the wounded of both armies here. Dr. Jonathan Letterman, Chief Surgeon of the Army of the Potomac established an ambulance system and the beginnings of the triage system to care for the worst first.

While it can be argued that because Lee had to abandon his campaign in Maryland, that the Union “won,” the fact is that his Army survived due to a lack of courage at the upper levels of the field Army. George McClellan was convinced he won because he repulsed the Confederates and sent them back across the Potomac River. The Southern leaders argued in France and England in the hope of help in their efforts to remain independent that they hadn’t “lost” since Lee and his Army survived. Lincoln and his advisors argued that this was the first great victory in the Eastern Campaign in a state which had mixed loyalties and used it as an opportunity to recruit, advance the Conscription Act, and used the favorable sentiment in the country to “free” the slaves in the secession states. Politics had entered the War.

Each side looked at it and found a reason to find “victory”. Sadly, except perhaps for the slaves who were no longer owned, it was not. There would be three more years of war in places with names we would have learned in a geography class had the battle been fought well here. Names like Gettysburg, New Market, Vicksburg, Petersburg, Atlanta, Richmond, The Wilderness, and Appomattox. Names that, had the Army of the Potomac been better led, might have never appeared in our history books.

THE BLUE RIDGE, APPOMATTOX COURT HOUSE, AND RAIN

2011-05-14T17:35:00.000-07:00

We have descended Roan Mountain after a pleasant stay in two and a half days of sun that eluded us again as we left. Down on the Blue Ridge we found the Parkway of the same name at somewhat lower elevations. The views were interesting as always although there is much construction there. Some of the pictures show the clouds. Unfortunately, they were in the same direction we were headed.

We left Tennessee and North Carolina behind and moved into Virginia at Rocky Mount. The day was short on miles and long on time since I traveled the low impact roads as always and rain showers began to dog us by early afternoon. I put in at the Fairy Rock State Park, one of the oldest in Virginia opened in 1936. It is a curious place with a large lodge and day use areas while the camping is at the top of the highest hill with sheer drops away from the campsites. It very much looks like the oldest state park. The charm of it is that it is so remote and one of the quietest places I have been in a long time. Wild turkey and deer walk about without regard to our presence. There are 55 sites. Three were occupied so far as I could tell and none that could be seen from the windows of the camper. A late evening stroll found that there use electricity penuriously. We campers get it and the public restroom appears to have one bulb near the door. It was as dark a camp as I have been in that wasn’t classified as primitive. No thunder came tonight, nor did showers fall, so the quiet remained unbroken.

I wasted an hour or more doing the week’s shopping in one of the south’s famous chains, “The Piggly Wiggly.” It’s hard to remember the last time I was in one and there seem to be fewer of them. We moved on then through Lynchburg, which seems to be wholly owned and operated by Jerry Falwell and Liberty University. The main highway and the Airport are named after him as are a few other miscellaneous overpasses. It is a big and annoying town that lacks a highway bypass. Finally, a short way up Route 24 we find the place we came to see, Appomattox Court House.

Considering the enormity of what was accomplished here, it seems a small memorial. The Court House here in the 1860’s burned soon thereafter and no one did much with the village that surrounded it to remember that the most significant and saddest war in the history of the country ended here. This is the place where the slaughter stopped, and the great experiment of a separate nation was declared over. The guns grew silent and on April 9, 1865, General Lee surrendered the Army of Virginia. Even at this last moment, 18 Confederate soldiers died in the effort and one Union. They are buried here together in the “Confederate Cemetery” down the road.

The village is all the more a sad place for the finality of what happened here. For years, it lay ignored while the town of Appomattox was favored with the railroad. The small but flourishing place was remembered only with bitterness by the locals, both for the loss of the rail stop and the indignity of being the last place Lee would command their Army. The signing here did not end the war until the other Armies still in the field surrendered, Gen. Joseph Johnston’s in North Carolina on April 26th, Richard Taylor’s in Alabama on May 4th, and Edmund Smith’s in Texas on June 2nd. Only then did the Confederacy cease to exist.

The only trivia that intrigued me was the new knowledge that neither Lee nor Grant ever went in the Court House. The actual surrender took place in the parlor of a home nearby in the house owned by Wilmer Mclean, a sugar speculator who had moved here from Manassas Virginia to be near the railroad during the war. So those of us who grew up in the north believing that the surrender took place at Appomattox Court House were confused. It was the town name, not the place.

It is, as all these monuments to this most American War, a quiet and contemplative place. A place to remember that whatever the point, too many young men died for a cause that arguably proved nothing to anyone but the slaves now freed yet still deemed inferior by so many in both the South and the North. It did not end segregation or racism, just the practice of one man owning another.

The rain, heavy at times today, will leave with us in the morning. I will go back West again to the mountains. There will not likely be better weather. I hope only for more good people to meet and learn from as this journey of discovery continues as we head further north by the end of the week to join family for Memorial Day. Then we will turn for home on a route yet unchartered.

So it goes…

WANDERING

2011-05-07T14:21:00.000-07:00

"ALL WHO WANDER

ARE NOT LOST"

J.R.R.TOLKIEN

In another day, it will be safe to say that I have seen about as much of the Smoky Mountains and its oddities as I could. The weather has been fine mostly, cool in the valleys and thus very cold on the mountains.

As I had thought when the trip started, I learned a great deal more about the area by staying out of the National Park than I did when I came many years ago and spent so much time in it. The Park is nearly surrounded by National Forest land which offers a less commercialized, more rural and beautiful view of the mountains. I left the Greeneville in northeast Tennessee for a place called Tellico Falls at the suggestion of one of my neighbors at my last stop. I ended up in the most lovely and peaceful campground in the Cherokee National Forest. The sites have just been rebuilt and are not of the sort one expects in such places with “rustic” writ large at the entrance. They were wide a level, all electrified and at the edge of a lake where boats are allowed only to use electric trolling motors. There are a series of these grounds in Cherokee and I could have spent two weeks in one or all of them, but we moved on to the Park via the North Carolina side after staying a few nights “off the grid” up high enough to find 30 degree temperatures in the mornings.

Smoky Mountain National Park is much as I remember it. Those who care for it do it well. Those who visit it are the both the obnoxious people I remember from the last time, wandering the streets of Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg with their cell phones in their ears and a lot on their mind that has little to do with the natural beauty of the place as well as the serious ones who come to see the nature. I found them today up at Cades Cove, hiking and walking, biking and driving with respect for others and enjoying the extraordinary views and the wildlife. It is still a wondrous place and my favorite drive in the park. There is an eleven mile loop of one way traffic that circles the old buildings of the last town to allow itself to be made a part of the Park. It has a wonderful history that runs all the way back to the Cherokee Chief Kade for whom the place was named. It is worth reading if you have time. It is far too complicated and long to try to replicate here. I remember I wrote about it on my first trip and even I lost track of who lived there, for how long and why they did.

The Park has been “done” now and tomorrow we will movie on up the Blue Ridge Parkway. The journey has some plan, which is to move north and west and then east again. We will go up on Roan Mountain in Tennessee in the far northeast corner of that state and then back into North Carolina and then on into Virginia’s more western area before joining the Shenandoah Valley in the march north and east. The Parkway will be the main route of travel, but the weather may affect that as will some interesting things further from it I hope to see. I have travelled it north and south before and while lovely, it is often, in it’s beyond rural setting, almost too unpopulated even for an isolationist such as me. It is likely why the Appalachian Trail travels with it some of the way down here.

The pictures with this post do not do the place justice, but they show how it looks on a given Saturday, what drew my eye and my imagination. There are many more but I will bore you only with these.

This is still a pristine place, for all the tawdry commercialism that surrounds it. This may be my last look at it, and that will be fine. There are new places to see and “hollers” and valleys to explore. Soon, I suspect, I will even reach a part of the country where the accent is lighter and I will understand what someone says the first time.

So it goes. Stay well, and be nice to each other.

SOME MOVE ON

2011-05-07T12:58:00.000-07:00

Unless one’s vocation is hermit, people come in and out of our lives always and often without choice. We are glad many are there, others, not so much. The ones that leave it are replaced by others. Travel as I do and new people are being plugged into and out of your life every day.
Important people come and go with some pain, the going made hard. When a friend or a spouse leaves the world, it brings pain. That is not the case usually when someone ambles away to other things, other places.

This comes to me now because there are two that are gone from my life and I will miss them. I will miss them not in the way brought by death but simply because there was a tenuous bond forged over many years. Perhaps one will be missed more than other. It is not easy to tell from this distance. Yet both are gone and except perhaps for the length of familiarity, both seem missed equally. Friends like these are like comfortable shoes. These were. They were not people known well, only seen often, spoken to quietly mostly and enjoyed for who they were. There was no intimacy, just a bit of common knowledge of each other’s lives, its circumstances, and history. We had a comfortable few minutes of talk often, to share a laugh, or a moment of the day not known to the other before we went to our other worlds. We did it for years with no expectations in these moments, and thus no attendant disappointments. They stood on their own, remembered but not fretted over, enjoyed but not pined for before the next encounter.

When people leave, you miss them because they are gone, yet know there was no reason why they should have been there forever. People move or move on to other things, to other places or other parts of their lives deemed more important. That isn’t something to take personally, yet for some reason one can. Perhaps I expected a different end. There might have been a clearer moment of departure, a reason for why it is different now. But that would be an expectation on my part, and that would have been wrong.

A LARGE ARK PLEASE...UM, OKAY, MAKE THAT A VENTI

2011-04-26T11:19:00.000-07:00

This is not a day to go anywhere. The weather front that has been lingering along the Kentucky Tennessee border, the one that did so much damage in Missouri has finally reached out and touched me.
It was inevitable. It has been held away from us by hot weather rising up through Alabama and Mississippi from the Gulf of Mexico. Yesterday and the day before the humidity began to fall as did the barometer. We all knew it would catch us. It was only a matter of time and attendant ferocity. The thunder and lighting in the dark hours of the morning told us it was here along with the flood watches and tornado warnings that attend such things. It will lessen today and resume tonight. We have been spared the worst—at least so far—and would be happy to miss the rest as it moves north and east. I am headed east so hope to stay below it until it has blown itself out. Rain suits will be the uniform of the day in the morning when we pull out with the hope that as we move into eastern Tennessee and reach the base of the Smoky Mountains we once again be in the clear.
We are settled in the Davey Crockett State Forest and Park, a verdant place on Shoal Creek near Lawrenceburg, TN with more tree pollen at present than can possibly be good for anyone. My neighbors include a pair of true full-timers and a pair from Syracuse New York who are on their way back for the summer. He eschews the title of full-timer because he still owns a house there, but they have been on the road since late fall. All a congenial companions and we all seem to be getting our weather information from different sources. NOAA tells me that tomorrow will be awful here which makes getting away problematic. Helen, the full-timer with a dog named Roy believes the worst is over. Tom, he with the two young a fun loving Pomeranians, thinks we will have tornados tonight which seem to worry him more because he just missed one in Oklahoma by two miles. It was first he ever heard and is less sanguine about getting through the night without a trip to the shelter.
If it rains all day, we will get very close to the Smoky Mountains tomorrow. If the weather improves in the Eastern part of the state, a stop at the Chickamauga Military Park near Chattanooga is planned and that will mean an overnight stop there before going on to Cosby which is in one of the more remote parts of the National Park. The weather is good there today and if the front moves north and east, will be when we get there. Cosby comes highly recommended by those who are regular visitors to the part. We shall see.
The Shiloh stop was both peaceful and sobering. I am posting some of the photos. The Military Park, which will celebrate the 150th anniversary of the battle on April 5th and 6th, next year. The history deserves to be read. It is well written by the late Shelby Foote and other far more accurate historians than I am. As with all the other places I have been and written of that involve that war, the ironies of the place are the fascination for me. Examples include:
--A drummer, the youngest known participant who was age ten, named Clem (last name) remained in the army and retired as a Major General 35 years later.
--Henry M. Stanley, who would famously find Dr. Livingston, was a confederate infantryman who survived the battle unscathed.
-- More than 102,000 troops participated in the battle, one of the largest forces ever during the war.
--The Confederate Commanding General of the Army of Mississippi, Albert Sidney Johnston, a West Point Graduate considered one of the ablest leaders in the CSA died here from a bullet in his leg. He had sent all his aides away to take messages to various regiments just before he was hit. Had he been attended to sooner, he would likely have survived. His loss is considered a major blow to the Confederate military leadership. He was succeeded by P.T. Beauregard, whose forces fired the first shot of the war at Ft. Sumter.
--The first field hospital of the war was established on the battlefield during the battle of Shiloh, the precursor to the modern MASH units.
--Because of the intense heat, the dead were buried quickly and in mass graves. The Confederate soldiers remain in these burial mounds today, while the Union remains were relocated to the Shiloh National Cemetery. There are two Confederates buried there. Both were prisoners of war.
There is much more about this now quiet, beautiful, heavily wooded place. It is reminiscent of Gettysburg yet there is no town of substance, only Pittsburgh Landing where Grant had crossed the Tennessee River in his quest to control the river and railroad trade routes of the Confederacy. It is not commercialized, and there is an apparent reverence for both armies not found at some of the other places I have visited. Two monuments to the CSA dead fly the “Stars and Bars” within the Park.

Here in Lawrenceburg, Crockett Park is here because its namesake settled on Shoal Creek and served as a justice of the peace, a colonel in the militia, and a state representative from Lawrence County. He built a distillery, gristmill, and powdermill here. He was well on his way to being a successful businessman when the flood of 1821 wiped out all three. Broke, he moved on to western Tennessee where he was elected to Congress. Fifteen years later, he was killed at the Alamo Mission while fighting for Texas independence from Mexico.
We will leave here tomorrow to travel as far as the weather and flooded roads will let us.

And so it goes...

THE MUSIC OF EASTERN ARKANSAS

2011-04-23T16:36:00.000-07:00

Friday, we made our way across the eastern side of Arkansas on a day that could have been painted for the occasion. After all the humidity and overcast skies of the last few days, a drive on U.S. 62/63 and a few state routes through towns with music in their names was a tonic for the annoying heat and occasional rain in the previous two days.
There is much green country out here. Jonesboro, the home of Arkansas State University is the usual urban mess trying to find a city center, but beyond that it opens into rolling hills, two and four lane roads with little traffic and about as rural as it gets. The County Seat of Marion County is Yellville, named, it is said for the first Congressman from Arkansas and then Governor, Archibald Yell. The story is that he offered the town fathers $50.00 to name it after him. They did, and he failed to make the payment. It doesn’t seem politics has changed much.

Yellville is famous for the Turkey Trot Festival that has been going on longer than any of us have been alive. It has been parodied on television and “exposed” in 1989 by the National Enquirer but survives today where every year they name a Miss Turkey Trot as well as a Miss Drumstickz—you can guess that one. They used to drop live turkeys to see how far they could fall without dying until they got too much publicity---it fails my imagination that one can be found guilty of cruelty to a turkey since they lack a brain—but the rest of its rural charms survive.

Traveling down U.S.62 is to move through the isolation and beauty of the Ozark’s small towns—most fewer than 500, some fewer than 200 that dot the landscape. Through the day we moved through Bull Shoals, Flippin (does anyone remember “Whitewater”—it’s still there), Ash Flats, Pocahontas, Marked Tree, Gooberville, Rush, Eureka Springs, Fifty-Six, and more. We travel as far as Paragould to a wonderful state park called Crowleys Ridge. It was our last stop before Memphis. Built by the CCC in the Depression, it has been updated but not modernized. It is a wonderfully green, quiet, nearly empty place this week before Easter. Here, seemingly in the middle of no place in particular, you find a dance pavilion dating from the 1930’s, two lakes, trails to hike and wildlife to watch. The trees are near full here now while the dogwoods flower still. It is a wonderful place to be on an April day and for a pleasant drive where lunch can be enjoyed by the side of the road and time seems irrelevant to the journey.

KANSAS AND MISSOURI

2011-04-19T18:44:00.000-07:00

Darlin' we don't need a lifestyle

So throw all those chairs in the lake

We'll take our chances

In Wichita Kansas....

Garrison Kieller

Kansas on a Sunday. It seems it is always Sunday when we pass through here. After sitting out the wind, or so we thought, in Meade State Park, the departure this morning came early and under overcast skies. The plan was to cross the most southern part of Kansas since NOAA said the weather was good and the wind was down. Well, it was half right. The overcast skies wear present all day as was the humidity, but the wind was back, albeit not as strong, but 25 mph is enough to alter your driving.
There has to be a reason why I am fascinated by the small towns, farms and emptiness of Kansas (that is viewed as redundant by anyone who does not live here). I wish I knew. Perhaps it is the peacefulness that a Sunday brings. The machinery of agriculture is silent. The church parking lot is full, young families fill both restaurants by midday in town. The yards near the barns are quiet. Even the cows seem to relax, not move from place to place in a seemingly random manner as seems to be their habit during the week. Before the family went to church and on to the restaurant, or the neighbors they piled hay high to be enjoyed at their leisure and they seem to know it.
We have stayed a night in Independence, the place of the fateful failed surgery and successful replacement of La Coachasita’s transmission last year. It is warm, yet the wind was a sustained 25 mph at the Lake. We stay the night this time and not two weeks as before.
The weather may hold for another few days in that it will be dry but it will remain windy. We are in beautiful Blue Eye Missouri tonight and then on into Tennessee, passing through the very far eastern corner of Arkansas on the way. Rain is inevitable and the troublesome storms and tornadoes are facts of life here. There are warnings tonight and a few thunder showers. It was 80 today. It will be 45 tonight as the front passes.That's fine. It’s expected.
The route takes me through Commerce Oklahoma the birthplace of the late Mickey Mantle. There is an excellent sculpture of him in front of the baseball complex there. He left as a teenager and went up the road to Independence where he paid his first professional game.
The quiet of this year is significant. Whether is it the price of gas or just early, there are fewer out here. It will be interesting to see if it continues. Easter is coming, vacations for schools. I am glad the 346.5 miles f Kansas is now a memory. I enjoyed the peace, the lack of traffic, the view of the farms and their people. It is enough.

And so it goes….

BLOWIN' IN THE WIND

2011-04-15T18:25:00.000-07:00

I have been on the road for three days.So far I have seen dust, wind and a great deal of Interstate 40. I decided that when I left I would not spend time in the desert. The weather is cool but incredibly dry and windy. In the northern part of both Arizona and New Mexico, all open fires are banned, and the people live up in the hills say the have never seen it this dry.

The wind became stronger around Flagstaff, AZ and continued all that day. The first travel day was long simply because there was little to do on a day that windy. The temperatures are cool and very dry, so night time lows are still in the high 30's. Chilly getting the van moving in the morning but otherwise quite pleasant.

Driving with a straight steering wheel has been all but impossible except at the slowest of speeds. The second leg was from just west of Albuquerque to Tucumcari. They closed I-40 for about three hours at mid-day because of the blowing dust. Had lunch in a rest area and caught a nap and then wrestled the wheel the rest of the way. This morning dawned bright and clear and calm. As we headed north and east on U.S. 54 through the rest of New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma the wind rose to a sustained 40 and a gusty 60. It is a road I have driven often. It is not a pretty place. There are feed lots where thousand of cows stand with their backs to the wind looking miserable. The horses, whose fate may be more kind, look no happier. There are many plowed fields on very flat land. When the wind is up as it was today, it is a risky place. The speeds are high, the truckers don't slow and we in our high profile vehicles without much experience at this, grit our teeth and try to keep up.Happily, we reached Meade State Park before the gusts got any higher and as the evening moves to night, the wind is dying. We will stay here until Sunday as tomorrow is to be pleasant NOAA tells us and then we will move on hoping that another line of tornadoes has not been spawned and the howling wind will have stopped.

The pictures here are the four or so I have managed to take in this part of the"drive until you drop" leg of the trip. We will proceed more slowly now, weather permitting and hope to do more than drive and hook up the electricity and then eat and sleep.

Things will get better. Jim told me just this evening.

COWBOY UP !

2011-04-11T15:17:00.000-07:00

“My Heroes have always been cowboys,

Still are it seems,

Sadly in search and one step

In back of themselves and their slow movin’ dreams.

Willie Nelson

The origin of the phrase that is the title here is unknown to me. It has replaced “saddle up” in the vocabulary at least for this week. It is what we are doing. A Marine friend--a former Marine, actually, but in their world they are a Marine forever—uses this expression all the time. It may be synonymous with the no longer politically correct “Man Up!” or it may, as Wikipedia has it, come from the rodeo, mainly among bull riders, who use it to mean get tough, or prepare to be.
Most men like to think they have a little cowboy in them. Generally they don’t, but they like the image. The mentality appeals to them because it gives the aura of independence, the lack of need for others, of finding their own way in the world, saying little except what may mean a lot. Most aren’t that way no matter how much they wish they were.
If you are little less fearful than others, never mind being alone, and have no idea what one’s real goals are in life until it’s too late to change them well, people like that are cowboys, too. Being a cowboy is a state of mind, not a vocation.

Yet I digress.

La Coachasita had a terrible winter, with a bad water pump, leaky roof, drain valves that refused to cooperate when replaced and other maladies. She is now well and says she is ready to Cowboy Up. She sits fully loaded with all but foodstuffs breathing heavily and figuratively pawing at the concrete driveway ready to do battle again.
The plan is to actually reach the Smoky Mountains this time rather than blow a transmission in Kansas, yet we know not what time and the road will bring. She is clearly aging and this may well be her last coast-to-coast trip. She wishes to reassess priorities when we return. Perhaps we will focus more on the Western States and British Columbia, taking more sedate journeys and staying in one place longer. She is tired of the longer trips across three time zones, tired of preparing for them, and neither of us is getting younger.
As long time readers know, these trips all have a theme. This one will be seeing many of the Civil War battlefields in the south that dot Tennessee, the Carolinas, and Virginia. We will go to Appomattox at the end of the eastward leg—perhaps someone will accept my sword in surrender. Davy Crockett’s Birthplace is also on the way and we will stop there simply because we can. The country is alive with Civil War re-enactments and doings this spring as the anniversary of Ft. Sumter draws near.
The Tennessee Smokies are a Double A franchise of the Chicago Cubs in the Southern League now after a 22-year affiliate of the Toronto Blue Jays and brief two-year courtships by the St. Louis Cardinals and the Arizona Diamondbacks. AA Franchises have a habit of having working agreements with teams for short periods but are sometimes blessed with a long time tenant. I was last there in the Blue Jay era. They have built a new stadium which seats 8,000 in Sevierville which is cheek by jowl to the Smoky Mountain National Park. It is a storied franchise and a famous league (formerly known as the “Sally League” when it was A level baseball) having been in existence since 1896 when the tickets were 75 cents and a packed house of 3,000 came to Baldwin Park in Knoxville. I hope for a three game home stand. Some of the “boys of spring” will be there and I look forward to catching up on their progress.
Some of the other things missed the last time we passed through include a good deal of the Park with stunning waterfalls, the Vanderbilt Mansion near Lake Fontana, and the downright rural nature of the place. The Falls have wonderful names—Mouse Creek, Mingo, Juney Whank, Hen Wallow, and Grotto—are just a few.
The state line of North Carolina runs through the middle of the National Park. While it is the most visited National Park, it is also one of the youngest and the only one without an admission fee. As always, the reasons are peculiar. The no fee rule is so because the road that runs through the main “gap” in the mountains is U.S. 441, the Newfound Gap Road that was the main commerce route to the East Coast for Tennessee at the time it agreed to sell the land to the Federal Government. The deeding included the provision that “no toll or license fee shall ever be imposed” to use the road. While I-40 has long ago replaced the route, the legislature has never changed the provision. North Carolina transferred its section of the road by “abandonment” and no restriction was imposed. It is called a “Gap” because that low place between peaks in the South is called that instead of a “Pass” as in the West and a “Notch” in New England.
It is a “young” Park because it was created by President Franklin Roosevelt in when much of it was settled land. Unlike the many parks in Western States that were still on Government or vacant land, the land had to be purchased from states and private individuals to create the Park. Cades Cove, a farm community on top of the mountains was the community most opposed to the formation of the park. John W. Oliver fought to keep it out of the park well into the 1930’s. More about John later in the trip. The Baptist Congregation remained outraged enough to defy the Park Service by using the existing “Primitive” church in the farm community until well into the 1960’s.
It is another of those hauntingly beautiful places I recall from my trip through it ten years ago. Much of the beauty takes time to find behind the commercialism of the nearby communities. We have resolved to spend enough of it this trip before rolling north on the Blue Ridge Parkway and through the Shenandoah. The Western leg will likely be a northern one with maybe a little of Canada and old friends along the way.
We’d be pleased to have you with us, my faithful iron Lady and me. We have a new traveling companion. “Jim,” a Gnome who watches over us from the dashboard when we stop at night. He is also known as Santiago in deference to my traveling companion’s preference for things Spanish. He’s a cowboy. Never says much, just stands there with his hands in his pockets with a smile and a twinkle in his eye.
So saddle up and come along, we’ll be glad for the company and will try to amuse, enlighten, or inform as we travel the back roads from here to there by way of the any excellent adventure we may find up arround the bend.

LOOKING FOR THE D TRAIN

2011-03-27T15:40:00.000-07:00

Spring Training in the Cactus League this year seemed to have fewer highs and lows and far more minor injuries affecting the good the great and the never will be. It seemed quieter and less contentious, too, but that may only have been a factor of timing.

Over the many years we have gone, we always vary dates. The show in Arizona only lasts six weeks. Early or late makes a difference, even by one week. If it is early, one will see many young players being “evaluated” in the games for which you are required to pay to attend. Managers and coaches are trying to settle minor league roster too in these long workdays of spring. If you go late you will see more pitchers that will start the season for the Major League team pitch longer into the games. It is known as the “stretching out” period. Typically the starter will throw four to six innings in late March and the regular position players will, if required, stay about the same, although there will be fewer of them since by then they are physically ready. Many of them echo the talented second basemen Ricky Weeks of Milwaukee, who says that spring training is two weeks too long for position players since most are on exercise regimens all year. Pitchers conserve their arms in winter for the grueling task of throwing 200 or more innings in the next six months That leaves “decision” players to be looked at, as in “we need to make a decision on him soon”, which is what managers say when the press asks if a veteran invitee has a chance to make the team.

This group always interests me. They are largely players without a full commitment from the team to play in either the minors or the majors. They are not protected--on a roster for example--and are being paid for the privilege of auditioning for a job. It can be for many reasons. Some may have been hurt last season and their former team released them when they were pronounced well. One of the more humane rules of the game does not allow a team to release a player who is injured. Some may not have played last year at all, spent a year out of the game for any number of personal or health reasons, yet are still young enough or talented enough, or both, for a team that has a specific need to fill to deserve a “look.”

The most interesting member of the group this year was a man named Dontrelle Willis. He is said to be as nice a young man as you would ever want to meet. The players love him, the coaches love him, and the fans, wherever he happens to be, seem to take to him instantly. Unfortunately, Dontrelle has a problem. He is a pitcher and he seems to have lost the ability to throw a baseball for an effective strike.

“D-Train,” as he has been known for as long as I remember him was originally a selection by the Chicago Cubs in 2000, which, in their familiar fashion, found a reason to trade this young talent soon thereafter to the Florida Marlins. There, in 2003, at the age of 21 he pitched in 27 games and won a remarkable 14. He then pitched part of three games in the Division, Championship, and World Series which the team won. He was voted the Rookie of the Year. In 2005 he won 22 games and voted the Cy Young Award given the best pitcher in each league. He was an on the All Star Team twice (2003 and 2005) and at the age of 25 was making seven million dollars. Life, for D-Train, one could say, was good.

By 2009, his wins and complete games had begun to wane for mysterious reasons, yet he began a new life with a two-year, 22 million dollar contract with the Detroit Tigers. There the real trouble began and by the middle of his second year, despite the team’s herculean efforts to find out what was wrong with their high priced possession, they gave up and released him. Late in the season, The Arizona Diamondbacks decided to give him a try since the Tigers were still paying him. He pitched two games. He won one and lost the other. He again was released. The San Francisco Giants signed him for two weeks and then he was released again. He has pitched in only 30 Major league games in three years, and well in only a few.

There have been good pitchers before him who could not find home plate after seasons of greatness. More than two decades ago, when the Pittsburgh Pirates still were a team that won more than it lost, there was a young man who burst on the scene much as Dontrelle, named Steve Blass. He had some wonderful seasons and then just as suddenly had no idea where home plate was located. He went to the minors, to therapists, to sensory deprivation therapy, and tried all manner of quackery to find out why but never saw a major league stadium again without a ticket. Rick Ankiel, also very young when he was a “phenom” pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals some years ago, suddenly began throwing balls over the catcher’s head. At first it was once in awhile, but soon it was with enough regularity that his manager removed him to avoid further embarrassment. For two years he tried to fix it. Finally, he went back to the minors, learned how to play a position, and came back to St. Louis triumphant. He remains active now near the end of a solid career as a very useful outfielder playing now with the Atlanta Braves as reserve outfielder and extra bat on the bench.

So what of Dontrelle? Because he throws the ball with his left hand--and there are very few that can do that well--everyone has been interested in trying to figure out what happened to him and make him “well.” He has consulted all the master pitching coaches and gurus in the game, likely more than we will ever know. He is only 29 years old, an age when a most pitchers enter their prime years. Yet he finds himself this spring in the Cincinnati Reds camp after signing a minor league contract trying to salvage his pride and his career. He is not sick, in pain, or injured. All he wants to do again is what he did so well when he was 25.

He has been his manager says “inconsistent” spring. By that he means he hasn’t cured the problem. By now, nearly everyone has a theory as to what that problem is. The baseball jargon about what makes him “unwell” flies around so furiously that even the most dedicated fan wonders what it means. What is odd about his case is that it is not a pronounced loss of pitch control. He comes close, just not close enough. The statisticians ask about his “numbers” and his “arm speed,” the coaches about his arm “slot” and “release” which are merely ways of asking if he follows through and lets go of the ball in the same place ever time. Others are of the opinion that his unorthodox delivery of the ball leads to a different motion each time and speak of a mysterious need for “motion repetition.” All Dontrelle knows now, after being pawed over, reviewed, filmed, and analyzed by some of the best minds in baseball is that he cannot, as he did a mere six years ago, throw a baseball for a strike with consistency and effectiveness. This two time All Star, Cy Young Award winner, and Rookie of the Year is about to become a “has been” before his thirtieth birthday.

I saw him pitch twice this spring. To my untrained eye, he seems less a thrower now and more a pitcher. Where once there was a jerky motion always, there now seems a “calmness” in his delivery that wasn’t there when he was the D-Train in Florida. Yet each ball he throws is not even close to a strike or so much a strike that he watches it leave the ballpark. When it does, he doesn’t hang his head or kick dirt, he takes a new ball and tries again and will keep trying I am sure until they make him stop.

One thing Dontrelle still knows how to do is hit a baseball. It is something pitchers in the National League are still required to do. He was allowed to bat in the first game I saw and hit a ball down the first base line toward the foul pole. He left the batter’s box with his head down, and with good speed. Between first and second there was no doubt he would consider stopping. He slid safely into third base head first to a standing ovation from the Red’s fans and his teammates on the bench. He scored one out later, crossed home plate, picked up the unattended bat from the hitter, handed it to the batboy, patted him on the head, and returned to the dugout with a toothy grin. He was exultant. Dontrelle knows how the game is played and still loves to play it.

In years past I have often found it painful to watch a “comeback’ player try to prove he still had the stuff to do the job. This year, as I watched Dontrelle, I found it sad, yet uplifting that he refuses to quit. There was a rumor in the Red’s team report that when the final cuts came, this happy, seemingly well-adjusted young man would hang on to a job with the team.

He didn’t. On Sunday, March 27, 2011, he accepted assignment to the minor league camp where he hopes more work will bring him back. He is expected to report to the AAA minor league affiliate. His 11 walks and no wins didn’t help. The fact that he seemed to walk more batters and give up more runs in the past two weeks didn’t help either.

Sadly, he has exhausted the patience of most, the wallets of two teams, and frustrated a legion of fans. Yet somewhere in his head he believes—he must believe-- that he can do what he did before. His life under the bright lights has been too short, too frustrating, and too sad. For him it is no longer a game. Yet he will continue smiling as he tries to learn all over again how to throw an effective strike for as long as they let him.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

2011-02-05T15:34:00.000-08:00

The temperatures in Arizona this week were cold enough to delay a golf tournament by several hours due to frost. Tempe recorded its lowest temperature in as long as anyone could remember at 29 degrees on Friday.
There are colder, more miserable places everywhere in the country, but the desert has not escaped the grip of winter. It is slow to release this year and for the Major League Baseball teams with pitchers, catchers and players injured last year due to report on Monday, if it doesn’t get warm soon, it will be as troublesome as last year’s incessant rain.
Things are better in Florida. Ft. Meyers was 81 today. Last Monday was “Truck Day” in Boston, a sure sign of spring despite the current conditions there. Three tractor-trailers left Fenway Park with all the equipment needed in Fort Myers Florida for the Boston Red Sox camp. To some die hard Sox fans it is, by all accounts, the first day of spring, since it must surely come if the Red Sox have gone to training.
Despite the much heralded (mis)belief that baseball players are a slovenly lot of performance enhancing drug users, many of the players are already in camp working on a new position or a new pitch. Most, to the astonishment of many who read these spring reports of mine, have been working out since mid December.
Baseball is serious business played for lots of money. It is no longer a game of pure talent. One cannot put glove and bat down in October, and pick up again in mid-February. It is a full time job. In the next eight months, every team will play over 200 games in cold and heat and rain. For a team fortunate enough to go on to the play-offs, the 36 game spring and the 164 game regular seasons will be extended by as many as 32 more. They often play ten days in a row and then travel one to play three more. The speed and finesse and grind of the game today demands that they be in much better shape than Babe Ruth ever dreamed of in the 1920’s. To play 196 baseball games in eight and a half months and do it well, you do not just pick up that funny looking leather glove and the white ball with the stitching on it and toss it around a few times for a week beforehand.
Our annual pilgrimage is in mid-March this year. As always, we want to see who still has the skills, who has lost a step or two, and who might be a little better this year so that their dreams of making an Opening Day Roster will be realized. These last come with expectations. They believe they are good enough and only have to get the manager and coaching staff’s attention long enough to prove it. Some will and some won’t. Managers and coaches tend to have their line-ups penciled into their minds early. These change only when an injury, the inability to throw strikes, or, as the legendary former Manger of the Los Angeles Dodgers, Tommy Lasorda once famously said, “he can’t hit water from a boat in the middle of a lake” forces them to do so.
Some will have their expectations fulfilled, many more will not. How they deal with that realization often determines the rest of their lives. Some will be judged to have not met their team’s expectations and be sent back to the minors or released. Some of those will feel they did and were thus unfairly judged. They could be right for it is a sport of opinion. Some try to make it a science, but it is not. It is a microcosm of life, which is not a sport or a science either. We expect and we judge as a result every day. Some do it badly, some expect more than they should and then judge harshly or poorly. The lucky ones take on life and it’s relationships with so few expectations of others they are rarely disappointed.
Baseball players are no different. Many come to camp with great expectations, play badly, and judge themselves or others poorly. Others have the same expectations but greater talent and a joy of being allowed to continue to play a child’s game in their thirties and have someone pay them to do it. They play hard, never feel the pressure, and smile at the same time.
The fun of the spring is not to see which teams will succeed and fail, but have moments etched into one’s mind. It is why you watch the games. If all you want to know is who won or lost there is no need to go.
Every year there are moments and feats that stand out, some humorous, some sad, and some well above the skill level of the individuals who perform them.
On a spring day in 2000, an extraordinarily talented man as a hitter and first baseman named Mo Vaughn, who played many years for Boston, two for the Los Angeles Angels and then went on to his home town New York Mets was playing in a meaningless game. For reasons known only to Mo, he decided to advance from first base to third on a single to right field. As he lumbered around second base, the third base coach threw his hands up in the universal signal for the runner to stop. Mo, with bulldog tenacity and not a thought about what the coach was commanding, continued his now nearly slow motion advance towards third. About three quarters of the way there, he seemed to realize that it was going to take something herculean to get there safely. He did what he had to do. He slid. Not in the convention way either. No, for Mo, this was too important. He dove at the base headfirst.
As Mo tried to do what the Book of Baseball says one can do, given average speed and an outfielder with an average arm, he had several problems. First, he weighed something north of 275 pounds. Second, on his best day, with a following wind, he could achieve the speed of a man single handedly delivering a piano. Finally, he began his slide about ten feet sooner than he should and despite the weight he carried, inertia was not his friend. He stopped short of the base by nearly five feet in a great cloud of dust. As he tried valiantly to wiggle the rest of the way as a one would under barbed wire, the throw arrived and Mo was tagged while still supine and three feet short of his goal. The umpire never raised his arm. He merely shook his head. I will never know why Mo did it. It would never show up in a box score, but for those of us who watched, it may have been the highlight of the game. Mo Vaughn now is out of baseball, a successful entrepreneur who rehabilitates public housing projects in his home town of New York City.
Five years ago a horrible San Diego Padre team brought a young catcher to camp by the name of Kristopher “Colt” Morgan. He had played one season in the single A minors, but was, as the biggest dreamers are known “a non-roster invitee,” to the major league camp. He had played well enough his first year to get a look from a team that had nothing else to look at except the fellow who had been inadequate the previous year. As the sun was fading one afternoon in March, and fans were already headed for the exits, he was announced as a pinch hitter in the ninth inning with his team down by three and two men on base. Most of those leaving stopped to see what would happen. He hit a high fastball over the left field wall. The Padres would lose more than 90 of their 164 games that year. Colt Morton would spend ten days with them and get his first Major League hit on May 8th and be sent to AA San Antonio on May 9th, where he likely belonged. Yet what he did in Peoria Arizona that afternoon for the 4,000 that saw it was perhaps the highlight of the Padres’ horrid year. For Colt, it may have been the highlight of his Padre career. Colt Morgan is now in the minor league system of the Seattle Mariners.
Three years ago, a young man in the camp of the Texas Rangers, Chad Tracy another minor league non-roster player, pinch-hit against the big leaguers from Colorado. He hit a home run with the bases loaded to win the game in the final inning. His Mother was in the stands, and his father, Jim Tracy, was a coach for the opposing team. When the field cleared, he embraced them both. Jim, Chad’s father became the manager of the Rockies later that year and last year Chad was an outfielder at AAA Oklahoma City. He has been invited back to camp again this week where his expectation will be to make the roster of the defending American League Champions.
Regular readers may remember Wyatt Toregas from last spring, a catcher for the Cleveland Indians who, we were told, would either be the Opening Day catcher for the Indians, or start for the AAA franchise in Columbus and teach the perhaps more talented young catcher there enough skills to move up to the “show” by mid season. He learned in his last week of work in the desert that he would go to Columbus. He has not played a Major League game since. After a month in Columbus he was sent to the AA Akron Aeros, an assignment that may have been clear to management but never was to Wyatt. It may have had something to do with the fact that his batting average was a mere .196 at the time. He was released outright in October. The great expectations he had when he reported in February of 2010 of being one of starting nine men on the field for Opening Day turn to dust in six weeks. The very fine print in the newspaper a few weeks ago, informs us that he has signed a minor league contract with the Pittsburgh Pirates and continues to chase his dream.
Spring Training is where an overweight veteran tries to take an extra base and there is humor in seeing him fail. It is where a kid catcher, a year out of Virginia Poly Tech gets a chance to tie a ball game, the son of a Major League Manager gets the hit every player dreams of and hopes now that this year will be the one. It is also where a young man once a top prospect of the woeful Indians, gets released because, while he can catch, he can’t yet hit the curve ball.
The beauty of the spring games is that there is a world of possibilities and they are both good and bad. In a month, when I will sit a score a week of games in Arizona, there will be a new moment, a new expectation, and a new memory to put with these.

It is why we watch the games.

CHRISTMAS AT ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY

2010-12-20T14:23:00.000-08:00

Rest ye once merry Gentlemen

Every year, since 1992, Merill Worchester, owner of the WorchesterWreath Company has brought wreaths to Arlington Cemetery.
Until a few years ago, no one but the workers at the cemetery knew his name. He got the idea when he was 12 years old and a paperboy for The Bangor Daily News and won a contest and a trip to Washington. When he had extra, unsold wreaths one year he brought them to Washington and placed them in a small section on the cold granite headstones.
The project has grown, been publized and now everyione wants to help. Yet for many years Merrill bore all the expeneses and his family did all the labor.The truck arrived at dawn, they did their work and were gone.
"I just seemed like the right thing to do," said Worchester.

Indeed.

Rest easy, sleep well my brothers and sisters.

All is well, God is nigh....

2010-11-09T14:04:00.000-08:00

THE OLD DEAR

1988-2010

Time is everything. A time to live, a time to enjoy, and a time to die.

In the spring, nearly 21 years ago, a one-year old cat established an outpost on the fence in my yard. She seemed to like the yard and stayed all day and on into evening, finally convincing someone to feed her.

Yesterday she left for good. After insinuating herself into the lives of all who live here, slowly at first and then for so long a time I feared she might well outlive me and I would have to put her in my Will, she went to sleep for the last time.

After a month of exceedingly good behavior and unusal energy, she came to a near full stop last Monday. She ate nothing, her gait became unsteady and by yesterday, her mentation as well. She never had an agreed upon proper name here---she was known to the Veternary as "Kitt" with the second "t" added so that the computer would accept it as a name. As the years went by, so many years, since she first arrived unbidden on the fencepost, she became "Dear One," and in the end, "The Old Dear."

Her Vitae became known in a telephone call on July 4th, some three months after she decided she liked it here despite the dog. A woman's voice asked if the cat that we had found and posted the signs about answered to the name "Cleo." My answer was simple and abrupt. "How the hell should I know? She wandered in here three months ago and didn't bother to introduce herself."

Presently, an elderly woman who, we were to learn, left her outside her home to de-mouse the yard while she was in Israel arrived. She explained that the neighbors were to keep an eye on her cat. Apparently the hadn't. She claimed her "Cleo," and we assumed that was that. Three days later, the woman drove into the driveway as we were leaving. She annouced that the cat was setting off the alarms in the house trying get out and otherwise annoying her. She had taken her to the vet who pronounced her fit but "depressed." She was on the way to the shelter to exchange her but if we wanted her we could have her. While she summarized this state of affairs a cardboard box rolled back and forth in near silence in the back seat as if it had life . Sending the creature back seem a bad choice to the members of our household. So she opened the door of the car, the box rolled onto the drive, and "Cleo" ran from it into our garage and the rest is history.

For the next 20 years she saw me off to work in the morning, walked over me on the way to bed each night, and stood on my chest on Sundays purring or snorting loudly because I had not arisen before dark. She seemed puzzled about why she had not been fed and never grasped what was different about weekends. She did not cuddle, barely tolerated petting, although would permit her ears to be rubbed. She never went from point A to point B without first visting point C. She taught me much about the Type C personality.

She was sure of her own way and made it without much fuss. On occassion she would find us if she thought she had been neglected or her biological clock told her that a meal was late. She never weighed more than nine pounds but had the constitution of the energizer bunny. Her vet rhapsodized about her "perfect" blood work and said she had the body of a 6 year old at her last check-up four months ago.

Goodbye Old Dear. Thanks for the memories.

FALL COMES TO THE SISKIYOS AND THE ROAD POINTS HOME

2010-10-28T14:06:00.000-07:00

A lot has happened. A lot that was scheduled to happen did not. We are now on the road home. The sheer size of the storm that was predicted for last weekend was enough to make this southern Californian decide that this had been a very lucky year and it was time to start south.

Unfortunately the start was about three days sooner than I had anticipated so two visits to see friends had to be forsaken for the journey out in fog and rain.

Last weekend brought the first significant storm of the season to Oregon. It went from major to scary Saturday when 4.0 inches of rain had fallen by 4PM on the coast and it was actually getting worse and the wind was 40 kts. and climbing in gusts. My plan had been to spend a day catching up on housekeeping matters in the Siskiyou National Forest and then head south, seeing friends along the way. At six that morning, all that changed. Water started to seep through a seal on the roof. It has happened before and I intuited that it wasn’t going to get better on its own. The immediate problem was solved by getting out of bed. The leak was directly over it. Now the choices were to find someone to fix it on a very rainy Saturday or try to control it and move right away to get ahead of the worst of the impending rain. The first has always proved the less favorable option, particularly on a weekend, when of course things like this always happen.

Apologies were made to my potential hosts and I hurried up through the passes and down into the central valley of California. The drive was not without its moments of beauty but mostly it was reminiscent of the cross country nightmare of two years ago. Fog was a near constant companion as was rain, very heavy rain. The good news is that the seal doesn’t leak when La Coachasita is moving. After a brutal 650 miles, we reached a place called Patterson, Ca and the “Kit Fox” RV park. It was seven o’clock, very dark and still raining, albeit with less force.

The Kit Fox is what I call an “out and in” park, a very large slab of cement meant to house those passing through and no reservations are needed. They are proprietary parks that charge a good deal for a one night stay, and range widely in amenities. RV parks in general never close. The offices do, however, so one must use the “after hours” check-in. There is no uniform system of after hours check-in, and the Kit Fox had an elaborate one. Without benefit of the feeble mental faculties I had possessed that morning, I noted that the bottom line of the directions was that the office would re-open at nine in the morning, so I dropped my name and the space number I was taking in the late arrival box and groped around until I managed to get in the space, got electricity to the camper, ate something, and went to bed in the hope that the “diverting” work I had done would suceed. It rained most of the night. I stayed dry, paid in the morning, and headed further down Interstate 5 still looking for dry air. It was getting better for about two hours and then it got worse. It stayed worse for another 400 miles until I was south of Monterrey. I moved back to the coast route at Gilroy, known as the “Garlic Capital of the World.” If you have a sense of smell, you can’t miss it. I stopped often, ate often, and checked the weather every chance I could. When I found only scattered showers near San Luis Obispo my spirits lifted. The wind was still harsh, however, so I decided to continued on to Lake Cachuma in the St. Yenez Mountains west of Santa Barbara where I assumed it would be better quicker and I could count on some warmth and less moisture. After the first night, when the showers were more than forecast, the weather turned warm and sunny. There are few campers here in this enormous park that I have written of before. The help is friendly and there is a bass tournament this weekend so more people will come in by the weekend.

In the end, a week planned further north exploring new things that will have to wait for another time and two visits were lost. Yet that is the nature of nomadic travel. I am enjoying watching the migrating birds and wintering hawks, eagles, ducks, geese, herons and all manner of woodpeckers here on the more than 1000 acres of park. The huge lake here supplies water for irrigation of the vegetables to the west and the drinking water to Santa Barbara and surroundings as the wells go dry in the summer months. The lake is high now due to the odd rain pattern and cool summer—down only sixteen feet by the testimony of the storekeeper. It is, as always, a peaceful place. A place I often try to make the last stop of a trip north, perhaps further set apart this year by the weather and the time.

Home is 350 miles away. The drive is easy enough and will be made when the food runs low or the clocks change. It has been a good trip taken all together and, since both La Coachasita and I have survived, will go down as another successful one.

Spring will come soon enough, new plans will be made, and we will be off again. I still am curious about what is over the next hill and, as Charles Kuralt used to say, around the bend up there.

Thanks for coming along.

CHARCTERS AND CREATURES ALONG THE EMERALD HIGHWAY

2010-10-17T21:48:00.000-07:00

The weather has stayed so lovely here it has been impossible to leave. Yesterday was the first true fog day we have had in two weeks. It is often been foggy here at night and in the early morning but rarely has lasted long. It is a rare year, not likely to be repeated soon. There has been some rain north of here, but the state from the midpoint down has remained dry and unseasonably warm. This weekend marks the first cold nights and truly grey days. It is the announcement that it is time to move on, inland perhaps, where the temperatures are higher in the daytime and the sun will be shining next week assuming the weather remains as the prognosticators suggest.

The time here has fallen into a pleasant pattern. The routine has allowed me to meet more characters and observe more of the creatures here. There are so many characters among these travelers and vacationers too and then there are the drifters, grifters, and townsfolk. There is so little time to chronicle them all.

As always, the bikers are fascinating. Two groups were here a few nights, resting up for the rest of their journeys. One, a young couple from Seattle who had made it this far in sixteen days was headed for “somewhere in California”. They showed me the topography maps that showed more hilly sections yet ahead in California than they had thought. I suggested the maps were likely right. I believe I saw Becky recalculating their turn around point before my eyes. Two others, young fellows who seemed more used to all this, told me as they munched power bars at my favorite local mini-mart one morning that they would be in Los Angeles in 20 days. It seemed short to me, but they moved with the grace of ones who should know their limits, so who was I question either their math or their determination?

The last week has seen a large influx of British Columbians headed for warmer climes or just finishing long trips and on their way home. Two ladies with delightful accents and a most noble “westie,” which walked as if he was king of the campground spent a night in the next site. They were headed home for the winter after having crossed Canada to Halifax and Prince Edward Island, and then “sort of wound their way back across the States” as they put it. They had been out six months, which seemed to me too short for such a trip. We shared dinner and a fire and they explained that they only lingered in the places they either found interesting or had never seen. This is for them an annual event although the route may be altered. They rent their house, fire up the camper and are gone a half a year. Their wit and wisdom was refreshing and, as with all such people on the road, they were gone too soon.

Denny is a drifter, in the best sense of the term. He has a camper on his pickup and had been on the road for several months just figuring out what he was going to do next. Half way through his stay, his brother joined him and yesterday they were off to Salem, his brothers “summer” quarters to sell the small rig for one that they both would be comfortable in and then they would go on the road. Denny was returning to Oregon where he had grown up and wanted to spend time here. Hosting at campsites was a possibility. I was impressed by his ability to be open to whatever the future might bring. He was a man of possibilities but not of expectations. I spent less time with his brother, but he seemed surer of what he wanted to do, and while time in the beautiful campgrounds of his home state appealed to him, I had the impression that by next winter, Tucson would be calling him back. They were nice, amiable men, well read and informed, different from many of the more parochial characters I meet on the road.

The drifters and grifters are here too. They always are. Some drift up and down this emerald highway, part beach, part forest, all year. Some do it for good reason. Work at seasonal jobs they hitchhike to every year. Or they go to see family. They are a comfortable bunch, hiking and camping as they wish, with no clock except the inner one that permits them to meet their personal timetables.

A few are just old hands at talking the money out of tourist’s pockets with a variety of stories that stretch the imagination. Often now they are couples and they have a world of trouble. Denny and I ran into one sweet pair in separate places on the same day. He heard the story up to the point where both had lost their jobs, she had lost a baby, and he was a “disabled vet.” By the time they found me, all these things were so and more. Her father had died recently and her mother now lay ill somewhere in Washington and they really only needed gas money to get there so she could care for her Dear One. He had no explanation why he had no disability check for his “war injury.” They moved off when questioned and the inconsistencies arouse. There would be a revised version for the next approach. Could it all be true? Perhaps. Yet in most cases it is unlikely. That is the scam you see, make it seem real enough and a few dollars change hands and they are on to the next mark. When directions to a shelter from a friendly store keeper were ignored, the case was made for me. Being inquisitive works best for me, as it had the day before at the mini-mart when “Billy” (his adorable dog Flash in tow) vouchsafed that he had to have lost his truck keys (he said he was a truck driver) and all he had in it the day before. When I asked him for a picture, he obliged. He sported a VA Hospital Bremerton hat and was about to tell me more about his seven tours as a combat marine in Vietnam when I found a reason to leave. He sat and finished his spiked energy drink as I headed back to camp with my newspaper and sent Flash into his act for a lady just entering. No hard feelings. Just a touch he didn’t make.

The town characters begin to appear when you ride a bike to town for more than a week. Some I had seen before on other trips, yet they seemed to be out more this trip, just like the sun. The dog walker, Florence, is a pleasant if loud woman who seems to know everyone. She appears about nine o’clock with ten dogs, all on separate leashes. As she moves up the parking lots to the convenience store lot in order to circle the gas pumps and begin the trip back, she orders them all to stop or start as the traffic requires. They obey her after several shouts in what I was told is a ritual a few years old. They are hers. She is not, as I has initially thought, a professional walker. She just brings them all out every day, rain or shine for their morning exercise. Since my trips to the store were limited to mornings, I cannot confirm that it is repeated in the afternoon.

There is a type of hat I have sought for some time. Common in the rural west, it is fine for wear in the van as a rain hat. It is made of a stiff cotton oilcloth that makes it impervious to water. It is just the thing for waiting about for the used water to empty at the camp dumpsite, or while unhooking the water and electric from the van. Its wide brim keeps the rain off both the face and the neck while not blocking the vision as a hood. I happened on a small strip mall that yielded a small tack shop that sold them. It was manned by a dapper man dressed in the style reminiscent of my father’s business attire. Harold had the hats, although only a few. I was fortunate to find my size. I asked if I could look around some more and he allowed he would be delighted for me to do so but hoped I could another time. He was waiting for, in his words “a younger woman.” She still drove, he explained so she was taking him to the senior center for lunch. Harold explained to his surprised customer that he was 95 years old, the younger woman was a mere 92, a “lovely” lady, and he was closing because his daughter (I never did get her age) was in Eugene for a show yesterday and had car trouble. He was most gentlemanly and apologetic and said I should come back again after I admired the collage of pictures on his wall of he and his wife as well has his graduation pictures from the “Teacher’s College” in Corvallis , where he had been born and raised.(now Oregon State University). He last worked for a pay from anyone but himself in 1943. He remembers U.S. 101 when it was barely more than a dirt track, paved as it was in gravel. Men of a certain age enjoy being told of thee “past” by men such as these. He explained patiently each picture of him and his wife of 65 years and those of his college days. He told of the eccentricities of all the horses he had owned and shown and how he came to own this shop, a place to be “retired” he said. He was a charming a courtly fellow and I glad I met him. I hope can be that gracious, alert and informative should I live to such an age. Oddly, after all the explanations, he did not want me to take his picture. He said he was getting to old for that.

Early the next day, I dropped my laundry two stores down and as I passed his store, I saw him sitting reading the newspaper avidly and with such focus he did not notice me pass. He looked every bit the gentleman I believe him to be.

The weekend fog and colder nights is the harbinger of the deepening fall in this magic place. The creatures now burrow in for warmth, the “snowbirds” move south, the drifters go on to the next place of interest or employment, the towns people begin to slow their pace for winter, and the grifters continue to tell their stories, bilking who they may, and life continues up and down this gloriously verdant emerald road.

IT WAS JUST IN TIME

2010-10-09T16:40:00.000-07:00

Carlsbad was in the mirror before five o’clock on that Sunday morning two weeks ago. The reason, in theory at least, was to outsmart the road warriors in the Los Angeles combat zone by first, travelling on a Sunday and second, going early enough before everyone jumped in their car and headed for the beach, Grandmother’s condominium or other important places. While this had been the plan for a week, it became an urgent need as the forecast for the weekend and week thereafter became clear. It was going to be summer, finally, for at least a week and while they were hedging their bets, most of the weather persons were beginning to believe it was going to more than just warm.

The benefits of an early Sunday departure are many. There were downsides. The first being “CALTRANS”, aka The California Department of Transportation, which takes advantage of the light traffic by closing lanes on the Interstates for “overnights.” Loosely translated, the term means that it shuts lanes down around midnight and works on them until after five in the morning. At the moment they are involved in a monstrous project to extend carpool lanes on the Interstate that I use most often. This involves demolishing two overpass roads in order to make room for the new lanes so that through the summer there have been weekends when the Interstate was closed completely.

The second reason it may be a bad idea is that Sunday is generally a day of rest for some business. Auto mechanics and dealers service departments being two. If you are going on Sunday then it is a good idea not to have any vehicle trouble that day. When the objective is 200 miles away, one rarely gives this much thought. In my case, I had the ambitious goal of reaching San Francisco in my brave but aging companion, more than 600 hard miles from home. While it gave me pause for perhaps a moment, my nature is to go for it. I did, and except for the brutal heat that was beginning to come upon the land even well to the north, it was a successful strategy.
Just short of the San Francisco, my brain cramped for the last time, I found an unremarkable and nearly full RV park that had a surprising four spaces left, got one of them, and crashed in the heat of the early evening until morning.

Once through San Francisco, I had hoped for a peaceful and cooler drive. But while the thermometer didn’t explode as it had in Los Angeles, it was far too hot for the season and for those of us like me who never had a real summer.

In the late afternoon I reached Fortuna, Ca where I was greeted by a westerly ocean breeze and a 75 degree temperature. After another quick stop I made the last leg into Oregon and the friendly confines of Harris State Beach at Brookings. The park was surprisingly crowded for a mid-week, but the weather forecast for the next ten days was magnificent and that for me is reason enough to drive too far in two days to get here. I stayed three days, enjoying the sun and cool weather that seems to have been with me now since I left the Midwest last spring. I made a rudimentary plan while renewing acquaintances with many of the rangers, camp hosts, and local characters I have met here over several years. I found the bike camp quite full, a group that is always interesting. Two were 16 days out of Seattle and two others were hoping to make Los Angeles in 20 days. They are kids, mostly. They are very much fun to talk to, in better shape than I, and interesting no fear types.

I wanted to see some of the river valleys that run from the coast up the coastal range. There isn’t much there but rural—perhaps beyond rural—countryside, a few National Park and county campgrounds but there are spectacular views and wildlife I wouldn’t see along the coast.

OFF THE GRID
I left real life behind for nearly two weeks. I went so far back into the hills and river valleys of coastal Oregon that I couldn’t even hear a radio station. It was a wonderful experience. I had what I carried in and there was no electricity except what I could collect from the sun on my solar panel and produce with my generator. The weather was wonderful and the wildlife everywhere. The humans I saw thought that this fellow in the van from California must be very lost. they even asked that in my few encounters. That was fine. The world I was in for a brief time was all my own. A book, a few crossword puzzles and a sense of wonder at what I saw was all I had with me. I went north from Brookings to the Rogue River and up the valley on the road that parallels the south side and passes through the Siskiyou National Forest. My first objective was the town of Agness. The sign at the town line welcomes you and announces the population as “Small.” I met the man who runs a popular jet boat business. His grandfather started running tourists in boats down to the ocean from Agness (yes, two s’s) with his dog by the same appellation. They are "jet boats" now, still a dog named Agness (the fourth or fifth by his vague count), and a great attraction to the tourists who visit the coast. This day that included three ladies “on holiday” from Australia, who found my “little house” quite charming were part of the group just returning. His staging area is one of about four buildings in Agness, the Post Office being the newest and the only one with a paved parking lot. If you ever wonder why that quasi-government corporation keeps raising the price of postage, you need only roll into a “town” like Agness and see the comparatively palatial place where the locals pick up their mail, the Flag flying proudly above. Peter Fazio, the congressman from the district has been around a long time and knows how to use his “earmarks” to keep his constituents happy. Dwight Eisenhower giving advice to a young man who sought him out to ask what he would do if he were running in his place is reported to have famously said, “Get the money for few Post Office buildings in the towns back home in the appropriations bill, and tell them all about ithow you did it for them" he said, “and be sure you ask for as much Interstate Highway money as you can.” All politics are local they say, but apparently the federal government supplies the cash. Here in Agness is a bit of proof.

The road from there is to Grants Pass, which is to Agness what New York City is to Cooperstown. It is not maintained in the winter which in the argot of the outback means it is hilly, narrow, bumpy and not all paved. Not many people would go to Grants Pass this way. It is only 56 miles, but about four hours I would guess had I done it in one day. One “summits” at a mere 4,300 feet at Bear Camp, then goes down to Gailce, Merlin, and Grants Pass a few miles beyond. I chose to stay on the mountain moving from one rural camp to another.

Five days elapsed before I reached Grants Pass. I thought five more on the Coquille River Valley back to the sea would be lovely if the weather stayed as unseasonably warm and sunny as it was now. It was an easier drive, with smaller camps but the medley of town names were magical and often apt. Dillard, Winston, Tenmile, Reston, Remote, Dora, Bridge, Myrtle Point, Gravelford, Norway, Arago, Coquille, and Riverton, bring you, perhaps five hundred people later, to the tony village of Bandon-by-the-Sea back on the coast. Bandon is a tourist town. Loved by many, nearly always windy and cold when I am there, yet found that morning when the wind was down, the sun out and I in no hurry. I enjoyed a designer coffee and my first newspaper in a fortnight at an outdoor table while my laundry got done in the laundromat. My phone beeped to remind me that it worked again, yet I had no desire to use it. I already missed my quiet afternoons in the sun, watching and reading and trying to think about life as it is and a five letter word for “turns around, as a mast.” It was a peaceful time, time one can cherish away from a world that seems to move too fast, is far too complicated, and more or less joyful than we may have once imagined. It was two weeks with no expectations except that day would follow night. There was no disappointment and no one there to disappoint. Just my inanimate steel companion, a book about the denizens of the Chelsea Hotel, scenery so lovely it seemed to hurt one’s eyes, and creatures great and small I could ask rhetorically of their general welfare.

I am back in the "real" world now, better for having left it and sure that I enjoyed my time “off the grid.” I am ambivalent about what it would be like to be gone for long. I believe I would miss the grid, the people, the laughter, and surely talking to someone besides myself. It is a wonderful place to go, that “world” but it seems good to be back in this one. I hope, having left for a time, I will understand it better and appreciate it more for what is here, and perhaps complain less about what is not and how it works.

There is still a month left if all goes well. The coast may see its first real rain this weekend. I am will see if it does and then go from here. It is warm and the morning mist of a Saturday slows the pace but not the activity. Dogs are walked, beaches are visited, and life moves forward, albiet at a slower pace. It is only water after all. If you get wet you go in and dry out. A gentle shower never hurt anyone. It may even be good for the soul.

A PACIFIC COAST REDUX

2010-09-24T20:32:00.000-07:00

On Sunday, in the dark of the early morning in an attempt to outwit the Los Angeles traffic, I will launch with my faithful companion, La Coachasita, up El Camino Real (now U.S. 101) for the Redwoods of Humboldt County and the Oregon Coast.

The first stop will be the much visited Morro Bay, one of my favorite places in all these years of running north. The trip to southern Oregon, for a variety of reasons not worth enumerating here, will be swift. After an afternoon and night in Morro, we will hit the road in the hopes of clearing San Francisco and Santa Rosa before stopping somewhere along the way. Then it will be on to Brookings Oregon and Harris Beach State Park, one of my favorites. The ten day forecast for the Oregon Coast is clear and mild and that alone would make the swiftness of the journey worth grinding out all those miles for two days. Once there, the trip will be become leisurely. How far north I go and how long I stay will depend entirely on the weather. If it gets wet on the coast I will go inland as I go north.
I have not even fooled myself with an itinerary this trip. I know the area well and have a rough idea what I want to see—fishing at Coos Bay, cheese factories just south of Portland, an aviation museum somewhere in between I have meant to stop there for several years. Perhaps I will make it as far as the Olympia peninsula and then a Mission or two that remain that the Spanish built along the route thorough California on the return trip.
As ever, it is a trip with endless possibilities, this one with no fixed agenda or time. I will be home by Thanksgiving unless I get a better offer, but expect I will start back when DST ends. It can get cold and dark early after November 1st I know, so we will see what happens along the way.
As always, should you come along, I will try to give you a flavor of the trip. It will be good to be on the road again looking for those things I may have missed or want to see again. It is a road I often travel, but I am certain there is still more to see. This is what we call the “shoulder season” for campers. The crowds of summer are gone. The zealous are out looking for a good hiking place or birds to watch. This is also the time when the “snow birds” begin to stir and move out of their summer lair headed for winter quarters. They are interesting, some of these restless ones. There will too, be a few working a bit as I will, and moving along as the weather and the mood may dictate. All in all, interesting folks. The characters will be there and I will try to tell you their stories.

I am glad to be back on the road and hope you are too. We’ll have an adventure. We always do.

ADDENDUM

2010-09-15T18:09:00.000-07:00

Bob Lindsay played in all three games in Houston. His family was present for all three. He pitch hit the first night and grounded out, played first base the second and struck out both times he appeared.

On September 13th, he got his first major league base hit. The Astro outfielder retrieved the ball and it weas given to him as is the custom of the game. He said later, " I tried not to smile too much out there, I didn't want everyone to think I was some kid."

After nearly 16 years of trying, Robert Lindsay is a Major Leaguer. The team in Los Angeles is so woeful, that he has become the talk of the sports bars. He sees it as nothing special, but maybe a chance for a real tryout in the spring.

THE GAMER

2010-09-09T18:09:00.000-07:00

John Lindsay was born in Hattiesburg Mississippi. He was an excellent baseball player and someday he, his coaches, and family all believed he would be a Major League star. In 1995, when he finished high school The Colorado Rockies acquired his rights in the 13th round of that year’s player draft and he eagerly signed and reported.At 18, he was a professional baseball player. He went to the rookie league anticipating the day he would be playing in the “Big Show.”

This month, 15 years later, at the age of 34, the 225 pound, six foot two, first baseman reached the major leagues for the very first time as a September "call up" for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Under the arcane rules of this game, teams are allowed to expand their rosters on September 1st. There is a limit, and most teams only add those they want to evaluate against the better pitching in the Major Leagues, or may help win a Division Title. In the case of teams that are no longer in contention to reach the play-offs, the number is usually greater. The Dodgers, who as of last night were 11 games out of first place have not conceded it is over, but as the saying goes in the clubhouse, “you can pretty much stick a fork in them, ‘cause they’re done.”

Enter John Lindsay. Last night, with the Dodgers trailing the San Diego Padres by 4 runs he was called off the bench to pinch hit. He is a right handed batter and statistically, right handed batters hit better against left-handed pitchers. The conventional wisdom of baseball then is that you “do it by the book,” that is, since a left-handed pitcher was at that moment standing on the pitcher’s mound for the Padres, “the book” says, you don’t let the scheduled batter hit if the game may still be in doubt and he is a left-handed batter. Rather, you “lift” him for a right-hander. The “book,” by the way, is the way managers and coaches explain moves such as this. No one has ever seen the book. It is the way in the strange world that is baseball, it has always been done, so that is what is expected. We are not supposed to understand these obscure things, only to appreciate that the manager is “smart” enough to know it.

A player officially enters a game when the umpire acknowledges him, and the public address announcer “Announces him into the game,” another obscure ritual appreciated only by the rule makers and not well understood by casual fans. The umpire saw John Lindsay approach and both signaled him into the game and made note on his line-up card that he was batting and in what position in the batting order. Once this was done, Mr. Lindsay was "officially" in his first major league game. The man, who spent 15 years as a career minor leaguer had a huge smile on his face and took his practice swings preparing to do battle.

Unfortunately, the Manager of the Padres decided, as is his option under the rules, that he did not want his left-handed pitcher to pitch to any more batters this night and proceeded from his dugout to the mound, signaled with his right hand, as is the custom, to send in the pitcher currently tossing baseballs in the home bullpen from that side of his body. While John Lindsay watched, the left-hander departed and a gaggle of infielders and the manger awaited the arrival of the new pitcher.

The “book” of course now produces a conundrum. Mr. Lindsay bats right. He is, statically, less able to achieve success against a pitcher who throws with his right hand. The Dodger manager therefore is faced with the dilemma of “burning a player’ by replacing Lindsay and removing him from ever participating further in this game and sending another player to bat who bats left, or simply taking his chances that Lindsay will beat the statistical odds, which is not what the “book” says he should do. Mr. Lindsay will be listed as having been sent to bat and thus appeared in his first game even though he never stepped into the batter’s box or saw a pitch thrown in anger. Joe Torre, The Dodger manager did what the "book" told him and not what his heart knew was right.

In good humor and a huge smile, Lindsay later said he tried not to look back at the Dodger dugout in hopes that he would not see someone summoning him back. Then he heard a voice call his name and knew what had happened. He returned to the bench, took off his helmet and batting glove, and sat down while a man named Loney made the same walk through all of the ritual blessing bestowed on Lindsay but moments before.

Mr. Loney hit the second pitch on the ground to the shortstop and was the last out of the inning.

John Lindsay was seen laughing in the dugout and was reported to have said to his manager and teammates with more good humor and bonhomie than I would ever had been able to muster after 15 years of waiting that at least he didn’t strike out in his first Major League batting appearance. Torre gave hime the lineup card on which his name appeared. He says he will frame it. The batting coach said in jest, "see they would rather pitch to Loney (the regular first baseman) than you, you scare'em Bob."

If John Lindsay never enters a game again, he is now officially in the Major League Record Book as having made one appearance, no hits, made no outs, scored no runs, committed no errors and never struck out. He is, for now, the statistical anomaly: A man who has “played” in a Major League game, but never swung his bat nor fielded a ball. Perhaps, as his smile seemed to indicate, after 14 years that was enough for him tonight. I doubt it.

The Dodgers continue their long reluctant march to the end of their season in Houston tonight. Several left-handed starting pitchers are scheduled to pitch for the Houston team and it is believed that he will start a game or two there at first base. Since Houston is closer to Mississippi, much of his family is already en route hoping that is true and the statistical line on this man, one who has followed his dream well beyond when most have decided it is over, will grow a great deal longer. All true baseball fans can only hope that he will flourish and the smile on his face will grow even larger than it was when he heard his name on the public address system in a Major League stadium for the very first time.

Postscript: Robert Lindsey played his first full game on in the major leagues September 11th against the Houston Astros. He was the starting first baseman. He batted three times and struck out twice. On September 12th he pinch hit (the Dodgers were losing badly after the first inning) again, and had his first base hit after nearly 16 years in the minors. The Houston outfieder retrieved the ball and it was given to him, another baseball ritual. He said he tried not to smile too hugely, because, "I didn't want to look like some young kid out there."

MR. AYERS GOES TO WASHINGTON

2010-07-29T18:52:00.000-07:00

On Monday, the White House held a ceremony commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act commonly known as the ADA.

It was a Rose Garden Ceremony of the type that happens nearly daily where the President greets those responsible for one thing or another, gives a short speech, does the ritual “grip and grin” in the crowd for a bit and then returns to the Oval Office and other business.

On this occasion it was accompanied by picture taking. When that is on the agenda, people wait in the Blue Room until each can have a moment with the President and a picture taken in remembrance of the occasion.

I am a veteran of these mini dramas so I am cynical about them. The people who have the opportunity to participate come from all over the country. They are awed by them. I understand that and happy that they are.

This one was different, for reasons even a cynic could appreciate.

Five and a half years ago, a columnist for the LA Times, Steve Lopez, decided to know more about a small and seedy combat zone near his office and blocks from the magnificent new Concert Hall. It is Los Angeles’ Skid Row. He met a man named Nathaniel Ayers, a profoundly mentally ill man, a dreamer, who slept on the streets, trusted no one, yet stood near an overpass each day, at the foot of the statute of Beethoven, and played passionate classical music on a battered violin with two stings missing next to his shopping cart that contained all his belongings.

The story of their odd, ever evolving and moving friendship was chronicled in Mr. Lopez’s columns and then in his bestselling book, THE SOLOIST, A Lost Dream, An Unlikely Friendship, and The Redemptive Power of Music (Berkley Books,2008). It is a remarkable story. It continues as Mr. Ayers---as he has always been called by Mr. Lopez---still fights his demons down the long corridors of unexplained behaviors and emotional outbursts. He now lives off the street but still is most comfortable in the small cruel world of LA’s Skid Row. He has also made the decision to take the drugs which he so long mistrusted that help let him function in his societal structure thanks to is unlikely friend. It has modified his behavior, but has not “cured” his disease nor completely made over his personality. He is still profoundly schizophrenic and is capable of uncontrolled behavior. He stills stands by the overpass most days, now with his new violin, viola, and trumpet, entertaining those passing, lost in his own world as he tries to interpret and understand the music of his hero, Ludwig van Beethoven.

Nathanial Ayers grew up in Ohio. His extraordinary musical gifts took him to The Julliard School in New York. His lost is way there, although no one is sure precisely how or why. The pressures of performing at that level or some other force made him lose his sense of balance and appropriate behavior. Besides being a magnificent musician then, by his second year he developed serious social problems and left. Where he has been since is still a part of his vague story but when Mr. Lopez found him at the overpass, competing with the sound of traffic while he played the music he loved hoping he could find a way to replace the two broken strings on his violin.

He has one living relative, a sister Jennifer, from whom he learned a few weeks ago of his improbable trip to the White House. Mr. Lopez admits to being skeptical. Mr. Ayers does not react well to pressure or new situations and he worried for his friend. Yet the dreamer already had the scene firmly in his head and pleaded with Mr. Lopez to go with him.

In the end he agreed but warned he would need new clothes. A longtime friend helped him pick out a new suit. He knew exactly what he wanted. A white suit, white shoes, and a white derby hat and bow tie.

Of course. What else? He was going to the White House.

On that bright and brutally hot Monday morning following a pounding storm, this large man in his splendid vanilla outfit, a nylon wrap keeping his long hair under his new derby and white garden gloves with the fingers cut off, waited to meet the President of the United States. He was awed by the experience. When asked, he said he knew what he would say when they met.

“I’m going to tell him to have a good day and a blessed presidency,” he said.

Soon, he had his private moment and he was beaming when he returned. He said the President greeted him with, “Hello, Nathanial.” He said he was “flabbergasted,” and then mused, “The President of the United States of America. Praise the Lord!”

There were 300 government officials gathered on the lawn outside as well as so many others who had helped make this landmark legislation a reality. They know that there is still much progress to be made in access and employment rights, but this was a day of celebration with performances by Patti La Belle and Mr. Ayers. His longtime friend from Julliard, Joseph Russo would accompany him on piano. After the speeches, Mr. Ayers was introduced and emerged in his dandy suit and walked under the Presidential Seal. Mr. Lopez had told the staff at the White House that you could not always be sure what you would get from Mr. Ayers musically in such circumstances except passion, but they thought it worth the risk.

After an inordinate amount time tuning his violin when Mr. Lopez worried whether he would be able to play after all, Mr. Ayers began to play, found a groove, the audience swayed, and Mr. Ayers lifted their spirits as his music soared, that passion very much on display.

After the President spoke, Mr. Ayers shook his hand again and darted in and out of the White House as if he were a resident. On the lawn, he accepted congratulations and posed for pictures. He would later admit that it was not one of his best performances, but the fact that this man who had made the journey from skid row to the White House was here at all may have been the real performance and triumph his audience understood and applauded.

Later that same night, he returned to his now indoor home on the strip of mean street he knows so well, the White House seemed a million miles away. When Mr. Lopez asked him how he would ever top this trip to Washington, Mr. Ayers had a ready answer.

“We can go to Rome and see the Pope.”

Yes We Can.

Note: Some of the information, and the direct quotes of Mr. Ayers in this piece are taken from copyrighted material in the Los Angeles Times of July 27,2010.

A VOICE OF DISTINCTION

2010-07-13T19:51:00.000-07:00

Millions heard his voice. For fifty-one years he was the voice of Yankee Stadium, and now, at 99 years of age, he is gone. Robert Leo Sheppard was the gold standard for anyone who aspired to be a stadium announcer. I have never heard anyone like him and may never again.

Reggie Jackson, the wonderfully talented, often irreverent Hall of Fame outfielder who was known, to himself at least, as “the straw that stirred the drink” and to the rest of us as “Mr. October,” referred to him as Mr. Sheppard and named him “The Voice of God.” His marvelous distinct, polite, and proper speech pattern became a fixture in Yankee Stadium on April 17, 1951 when he debuted as the public address announcer for the New York Yankees. There he remained until 2007. No baseball player who was ever introduced by him will ever forget it. He was that much of a legend, heard by millions, seen by a few, yet known to nearly all who follow the game.

George Steinbrenner, the flamboyant and legendary owner of the Yankees whose own death came days after Sheppard’s, said, “His death leaves a lasting silence.” He may have been the only employee of the Yankees that Steinbrenner never criticized.

Fifty-one years is a long time to have one job. Yet Bob Sheppard never thought of it as his most important one. He was first a speech teacher at St. John’s High School in New York and later a Professor at St. John’s University. Those were the ones of which he was most proud. Announcing was something he did besides that and perhaps because he saw it that way it was never about him. He believed it was his job at the ballpark to report what was happening and announce what was important. He did so in the same tone as he taught his classes, distinctly and with respect.

A New York Times’ Columnist, Clyde Haberman once wrote of him “he could read Eminem lyrics and make them sound like the Magna Carta.” In his career, he announced more than 4,000 games, 62 World Series Games and two All Star Games. Over the years, he announced the names of more than 70 members of the Baseball Hall of Fame.

When I was a boy sitting in the centerfield bleachers of the old Yankee Stadium, I heard him and never forgot his voice. He brought composure and a dignity to the mere act of informing the crowd who the next batter was. It was a pleasure to listen to him. His tone never changed. The enthusiasm and drama of the moment--which he said he appreciated--never entered his voice. He was not a cheerleader or a circus barker, he said, just a reporter. He would introduce each player in the same unique way with the same intonation. The first time they came to bat, in deference to those who might be using a score book and had arrived too late to hear him announce the starting lineups, he would include the name, number, position, and place in the batting order the first time the player appeared. After the first time, he would state, in that professional, cadenced style of his, the player’s position, number, last name, and repeat the number. Whether a Yankee or visiting player, all were introduced the same. He told an interviewer that he came to the stadium, studied the names before the game, called the visiting clubhouse for the correct pronunciation if there was a question, write it phonetically, and practice it again. He particularly enjoyed saying the names of the Latin players, he said, they were more musical. His favorite name, however, was Mantle, he admitted, because he both loved the player and the way the syllables sounded. No one remembers a name he mis-pronounced.

He never missed an Opening Day until he dislocated his artificial hip in 2006. He had a bronchial infection at the end of the 2007 season, missed the Divisional Series that year, and never returned to work. He was retired when the Yankees left the old stadium for the “new” Yankee Stadium across the street in 2009.

It seems fitting that he never announced there. He was the voice of the “House that Ruth Built” as the old one was known, and not the one built by the Steinbrenner family that replaced it.

On a warm evening in the 1990’s, I sat in a place then known as Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego and much to my surprise, I heard The Voice again. Bob Sheppard’s vacations' were what my father would have called “a busman’s holiday.” When he visited friends in San Diego he always announced at least one game for the Padres.

The Padres had a pitcher in those days that had been special in his early career with them by the name of Andy Hawkins. When he became free to negotiate with other teams he signed a very lucrative contract with the Yankees. A country boy from the south, Andy had thrived in the player friendly confines of San Diego. His stay in New York was both brief and brutal. He was bewildered by the press attention, the pressure cooker atmosphere, and the expectations of the big city fans. His performance mirrored his confusion. Soon, he moved on, traded away as so many have been that failed to thrive in that way of life they found so alien. After a time he came back to the Padres, no longer a star but a serviceable extra starter and relief pitcher who could, as managers say, "give you innings" on the days when the starter faltered early. One night, he was scheduled to start, and Bob Sheppard was in town and at the ballpark with friends. Through a series of machinations only his teammates and coaches could appreciate, Bob was convinced to announce the starting lineups for the two teams. Andy was in the bullpen warming up for his start when he heard the stentorian tones of the voice of the Yankee Stadium announcer issue his signature command:
“Your attention please, Ladies and Gentlemen,”
Hawkins--it was later gleefully reported by the bullpen staff--stopped in mid-delivery, turned violently as if he heard a shot and looked to the press area, stunned by the sound of “The Voice.” He would later tell reporters, amid the laughter in the clubhouse, that somehow he feared he had been transported back to New York. He enjoyed the joke, but not nearly as much as Bob.

The Voice is still now, another of the great ones of baseball gone. Remembered for his quiet dignity, his grace, and dry wit, he enhanced the games he announced and the “Game” he gave those fifty-one precious years just as Harry Carey, Mel Allen, Red Barber, and Ernie Harwell and a few others have with just the sound of their voice.

Yet, unlike the others, he can still be heard. In 2006, the shortstop for the Yankees and team captain, Derek Jeter, who has been a Yankee his entire long and very talented career, said, “When you think of Yankee Stadium, he’s the first thing that comes to mind. It’s not right playing here unless he’s the one announcing.” On hearing that, Bob recorded his introduction of Jeter and those going to a Yankee home game still hear “The Voice” say these words whenever he comes to bat:
“Now batting for the Yankees, the shortstop, No. 2, Jeter, No. 2.”

A LONG AND WINDING ROAD

2010-06-20T16:41:00.000-07:00

It was a perfect afternoon and evening for a ball game. I watched two and a half of them as the Wheatland Lobos took on the Laramie Rangers.

I am not sure that this is the way they do it all the time, but given the distances between towns in Wyoming it makes some sense. It had rained here a great deal this spring so they may have been making up for lost time.

I should back up here a bit. Wheatland Wyoming is north of Cheyenne and an exit down from Fort Laramie which is the way I like to leave the pandemonium of the Black Hills souvenir world behind. The route is quiet and populated more by Elk, Bison, and Llamas all grazing together than people.

When I left you last I was exiting Minnesota into South Dakota. The plan had been to spend a week or so in the Black Hills after the obligatory stop at the infamous Wall’s Drug store in Wall, both named for Mr. Wall, who offered early travelers a free glass of ice water to slake their considerable thirst after traveling the plains of the Dakota Territory. It is now a scene of madness with everything for sale from lunch to Levi’s and all manner of cheesy souvenirs. One still can collect that glass of water for free, but finding parking is a problem.

It was still raining. NOAA seemed unsure how far west and north the front would reach, so I decided to look around South Dakota a little and stopped the weekend in Mitchell at the public park. Mitchell is a sizeable city. It is largest I have encountered that has a “town” campground. There is a small lake there and swimming is allowed so it can be a busy place on weekends. When I arrived on Friday it was pleasant, by the time I left on Sunday it had rained more than 7 inches, which qualified as the 100 year record in a 48 hour period, and a sinkhole had begun to appear in the campsites across from me of sufficient size to require one trailer to be pulled out. I left at six on Sunday morning in fog and rain heading north where, NOAA now assured me, there were only partly cloudy skies and less humid temperatures.

The roads in the nearly flat, square states are straight and nearly true to the major compass headings most of the time, so I was headed due north with one eye on the rising James River which would not crest for a few days but was already out of its banks and flooding farms and what are charitably called “secondary roads” here and the other eye on the sky searching for the beak in the gray dullness that had been my companion for far longer than I enjoy. Near the state capital of Pierre in the northwest part of state a light rain fell with some interruptions. It is known to the locals as “Peer” the local Americanization of the French. The State capital building and the governor’s house and the various agency headquarters are in the western part of town. I made a quick tour, noting the remarkable lack of security, which I assumed from my Washington experience, accompanied every public place these days.

I decided clearing weather here seemed out of the question so continued north. When I reached Modoch and the Indian River State Recreation Area I found sun along the Missouri River at this pleasant place where Lewis and Clark’s Corp of Discovery had made camp for a time on their way out in 1802. The prairie rolls here giving the illusion of hills. This year it is very green given all the rain and seemed a different world compared to the grey and foggy dawn I had seen when I left the south eastern part of the state, a mere 150 miles south.

I was tempted to spend some time to scrape moss from me here but still had not given up the idea of more than a cursory look at the Black Hills . During the bicentennial of the Expedition of the Corps of Discovery I had devoted nearly two years to following this route and while this looked pleasant it was too familiar. There was little here left to amuse my twisted sense of imagination except to look at the towns of less than 300 I had been moving through all day and wonder how I would handle the experience of living in one.

So the next day I was off west and south and–despite the forecast—back into the rain and fog. I was tired of this race to beat weather. I rarely mind the rain if it is warm, but there had seemed to be enough of it now, so the Black Hills would get a cursory look and I would go over them and into Wyoming and while doing that, try to decide what would come next.

After “experiencing” Wall and the eponymous drug store, I decided to stop short of the Hills. Given the traffic of trailers and class “A” campers seeming full of people it seemed wise to be sure I had a place to stay if I still was going to spend time in the Black Hills. The campground was proprietary in the town of Hasta which is four blocks square with many abandoned buildings, no business I saw except the campground, an elderly motel, and a service station which doubled as another “express campground” whatever the meaning of that term. I was later assured less than 100 people lived there on a permanent basis. The place I stayed is technically still under construction and had four customers. It was run by a young woman who, with her husband, was building a summer house in the trees nearby. They were both born here, knew each other in the high school which used to be here, went their own way for a number of years, meeting again, marrying, and moving on to Phoenix, a construction partnership, and a job with the Arizona Republic which disappeared with all the other mid level management jobs two years ago. He now drives an over the road truck for the Swift Company and she was here, finishing the house and living with her in-laws while the rain held up the completion of the house and the campground.

I learned all this while hooking the camper up to the utilities and she told me about most of her life which was now, she believed, happier than it had been when it was stressful and the money more plentiful. She was pleasant and interesting and I was impressed how well the couple had coped with the collapse of construction and the red ink bleeding from the newspaper business. Hearing her story made for a pleasant way to spend a gray and drying afternoon.

The next morning it cleared late after a dense fog I only emerged from as I climbed into the hills. It became a cloudless and warm day. The traffic in the Hills near the “attractions” was awful for one used to moving along the farm roads of the plains dodging an occasional truck or tractor. Rapid City was on the way to work as I went through and I wondered idly how I would handle the Los Angeles freeways if I was having trouble with this. I found the crowds an annoyance. Not in what they did, just that they were there. It was a sure sign, experienced before, that it was time to make plans for a way home. Except for the distance that lay between, there were few things I wanted to see or do, so I made a pass at Mount Rushmore, which looked the same of course, and Sitting Bull, which has progressed yet is itself bordering on a trashy sort of tourist attraction, much different than when I first saw it in 2002. I passed on the various caves of wonder, the zoo, and the rattle snake farms and the rest, kept moving and hence reached Wheatland. There are still things in and near the Black Hills I want to see—the Badlands, Custer, and the canyon where Bridal Veil Falls are, but I will do it another time when I can do them all justice and it is either earlier or later in the season.

Wheatland is a small, seemingly prosperous place just south of Fort Laramie and north of Cheyenne. It has a most attractive multiuse park that includes three baseball diamonds, a large picnic area, an outdoor theater stage an enormous swimming pool, tennis courts, a basketball court, and numerous picnic facilities. Many of the denizens here use it to walk in the evening and early morning, some accompanied by dogs, some by neighbors who make the circuit of the large place in good humored conversation and some who have obviously been told to get some exercise and move in a more solitary and plodding way around the road that surrounds the vast green area in the center. On the south side of the park, the city has 10 sites for RV campers and a tenting area. There is electricity available at ten sites. A sign asks for a donation and one is glad to leave one for a chance to watch the activities of the park and stay for the night in a quiet place under the large cottonwood trees.

I was attracted as I always am to the baseball diamond where I found the three teams from Laramie High school here to compete against the hometown Wheatland Lobos. I watched the freshman game, the Junior Varsity, and most of the Varsity game. Baseball, it is well known, is interesting to me at any level. I was struck that the JV game was the most competitive and error free. The freshman game was marred by the fact that the catcher for Wheatland, a boy no larger than 5”3” had a general understanding of the equipment needed and that squatting down was required, but lacked all the other requisite tools needed by a catcher, the most unfortunate being his inability to catch a thrown baseball. By my count eight runs scored as a result of balls that reached the backstop untouched. On this warm day, he may have worked harder and to lesser effect than anyone on the field, to the chagrin of all in the home dugout. He was mercifully removed for the last two innings. The other two games moved faster mainly because the ability levels were markedly better. When the lights came on in the fourth inning with the home nine behind by six and the Rangers clearly the superior team, I repaired to the camper for dinner and a glance at maps to decide on tomorrow’s destination. For the record, the Lobos won one out of three. The chosen destination was Colorado City.

It was time to go south and west which would bring me home. The trip was nearly done, the heat was coming to the desert, and this trip which had started as they all do with great promise, had more serious hiccups than most, felt as if it should be over. La Coachasita remains well but as happy as I to be going home.

We traced a path through the mountains of New Mexico near Taos, through a slice of the Navajo Nation including Shiprock and Window Rock, made famous by the mystery stories of the late and supremely talented novelist, Tony Hillerman, and made a last stop near Winslow Arizona. By tomorrow night I will be home, nearly 6,400 miles later, content with what I saw, pleased that I still enjoyed the places, the people, and the adventure.

Thanks for riding along.

GOODBYE MINNESOTA

2010-06-12T15:33:00.000-07:00

It seems at once yesterday and three week ago since I came up the road to New Ulm and began a long wander through Minnesota. I went as far as one can to the Lake of the Woods and then turned around and returned on the western side of the state, more famous for its prairie than the familiar white and red pines of the north.

There were new places, surprises, an old favorite, bugs and lots of rain as part of that but as I left Thursday I felt I knew it better now. Readers with me last year will remember that I came barging out of Canada from my trip around Lake Superior to discover the wonderful area north of Duluth, then on to St. Cloud and on south in the quest to find warmth and a lack of precipitation, the Lincoln Highway, and thus missing attractions along the way in my haste.

Several years ago as part of the great adventure of following the Mississippi River from the end to the beginning, I ended the trip at the headwaters at Lake Itasca and exited stage left to follow Route 2 across the roof of the rest of the northern tier of states on U.S. 2. Both of those trips into the state seem too short.

New Ulm was a short trip from Clear Lake Iowa. An annual park pass at their State Park seemed wise since it was a reasonably guess that I would stay in more than five parks, thus making the one visit, five dollar version a bad investment. As it happens I was in seven by the time I left on Wednesday in a truly epic thunderstorm that was doing a good job of taking the leaves off the trees art Blue Mounds State Park in the far south western corner of the state. It seemed a fitting send off. There was more to come in South Dakota since that is where the weather came from, but I hoped it would moderate.

Minnesota is a marvelous and diverse place. While most of my time was spent in the more rural environs, I did pass through a number of places with populations greater than 20,000, a fairly urban experience for me. Weather was a driving decision. The weather north was better than near “The Cities” as the natives refer to Minneapolis and St. Paul, located cheek by jowl on the Mississippi River. Following a central route, wandering through New Ulm and on to Mille de Lac and northward, we reached Bemidj. I paused for a mandatory cleaning, laundry, and shopping stop. The hotel I stay at there is on the lake and hosts many of wedding receptions. This trip an actual wedding occurred on the lawn facing the lake. It is a lovely spot, albeit a bit windy. Kris and Mandy whoever exchanged their vows just one floor below my windows and I was entertained by piped in violins, a live guitarist, and the sonorous sounds of the good Reverend as he discomforted the bride by telling anecdotes about her early years—which would have been the ones prior to her 19th birthday which she had celebrated a week before.

I like Bemidji. This is the second time I have been there in the spring. It may be that the joy of sun and a 70 degree temperature is such that natives are incapable of ill humor. They are fond of running, skating, bicycling and walking along the lakefront. I was struck by the lack of obesity in Bemidji. It exists, but seems less prevalent here than in the population as a whole. The University (Bemidji State) there means that many of the clerks in the business are young, cheerful, and less jaded than most. Glad to be working and happy to help.

This trip, I spent two days in the Lake Itasca State Park which is the oldest one in the state and the “home” of the headwaters of the mighty Mississippi. It is a remarkably large place with more than 100 lakes within its boundaries. One can drive a 17 mile loop in the most rural part and find beaver dams and visit many of these small lakes. It rained of course, but lightly and the weather was warm enough to make up for it. The campground is rustic and enormous, a favored spot for natives to spend a week in summer.Here, as in all the places I have been this year, the number of tent campers are more numerous than in past trips. No one has an adequate explanation. They are usually younger and often same sexed and seem to enjoy the experience. Some of the campgrounds have length limits few more than electricity at the site which explains perhaps why some of the larger road warrior trailers and motor homes are absent.

Continuing north, as far as I could go, I reached the edge of the Lake of the Woods at a primitive campground known as Zippel Bay. It is rural there. No, perhaps beyond rural, but the best chance to see eagles, owls, and bears. They were all there but my attempts at photography thwarted at every turn by birds far more wise than I. I saw a fair number, but never when I was in a position to get a picture. No matter, they are in my mind and they are wonderful. A couple from Oregon and I set off one morning to see if we could find the bears we had been warned to avoid and came across a small black bear, which we concluded was a cub and if so momma was likely to be nearby so we hastily retreated. We did see some larger ones fishing, but only through binoculars. In the evening the deer came to the meadows as they did at dawn, just before full light. They were skittish. I am sure the lack of human contact is the reason. We enjoyed them as the firelight took hold and the very late sunsets here in the high latitudes faded into the gloaming.

The trip down the western side of the state was slow and meandering. Never one to use an Interstate when there is an alternative. I found lots of them and lots of small parks to spend a night or two. The rains returned as did the fog. Time at the wheel was contemplative. The state road speed limit is 50 MPH so there was time to look about and enjoy the scenery that so fascinates me.

As in many places there are small but interesting National Monuments here about which one knows nothing unless you take the time to get off the road. One such this time was in the town of Pipestone in the far south western corner of the state. The town takes its name from the quarry just outside of town. It is considered a holy place by many Indian tribes for it is here that the stone for the ceremonial pipe is found. It is in fact one of the few places in North America where it is found. Specimens of peace pipes, as they became known to whites, have been found that were quarried here as far away as Ohio. There is evidence that the red stone—said to be red with the blood of the ancestors---has been quarried here for more than 2,000 years. While there is a long and tortured history of control of the quarries, it was always sacred ground. When members of different tribes would come to quarry the stone, they left their weapons and gathered the stone peaceably. The Yankton Sioux had exclusive control given them by the US government in 1858 and were then moved 150 miles away shortly thereafter making it difficult to exercise it. They reached a settlement in 1928 which ended their claim. In 1937, Congress established the National Monument and gave only Indians exclusive quarrying rights.

Today, a member of any tribe, recognized by the U.S. government, may quarry here. Some have been doing so for years. Some come once or twice a year. There is a five year waiting list. It is done only with hand tools. The vain of stone they wish to reach is deep under the quartzite of the surface. It is not easy work but it is a connection to their ancestry that many Indians cherish. Each of them leaves gifts for the gods they believe inhabit this place near the great boulders at the entrance known as the Three Sisters. It is a quiet and peaceful place with a beautiful stream fed from springs. I am glad I found it and had time to explore. It is complicated, as I have found most Indian sites to be, but once one understands the reasoning of the natives as to why this place is holy and necessary, it is easier to understand why the pipe is used at all.

A white man named George Catlin came here in 1836 to live among the Indians. He wrote extensively in journals and made maps of much of the area that the Plains Indian Tribes inhabited. His true talent was painting and many of the hundreds he did are now a part of the Smithsonian Institution’s American Indian collection and found in museums in states throughout the Mississippi River basin. Catlin was a remarkable man who came here first with General Lewis and published a number of books about the Indians of North America traveled as far as Florida and Canada to paint and worked for the Smithsonian near the end of his life.

The peace of the countryside and the warmth the people I met along the way has made this trip through Minnesota most pleasant. I do not know when I will be back, but now at least I can say I have taken the time to look at much of it for more than a fleeting moment.

Thank you Minnesota.

AMERICAN PIE

2010-06-04T18:52:00.000-07:00

Happenstance is all it was.

It had been a long day, it was about to rain and, from what NOAA radio said, it would be very hard and soon, so rather than continue on to Minnesota this day, I stopped. The state park was empty of people but full of Memorial Day trash and I wasn’t in the mood for a mess. I found a useful, if not charming, full service proprietary RV Park down the road and around the lake a bit further on, so I took the opportunity to run all the water I wanted and enjoy the luxury of knowing it was not coming from my internal tank and in the morning I could refill that nearly empty vessel with well water soft and pure.

A chatty and kind host met me and a bit later her husband walked over to the site to tell me of the pleasures of being a full time RV dweller (and one of the few without a dog). As he was departing, he said casually enough “Don’t leave without seeing the Surf Ballroom.” “The what?” replied the sleepy and now wet me now clambering back into the van when I suddenly remembered. This was Clear Lake. This was the place they sang their last songs.

I had seen the town on the map when picking the route. I knew it meant something but not what. If senility truly is the remembering vividly things long past better than yesterday, then I am happy to report I do not have it yet.

Now I have seen it, Now I have seen the place remembered for that awful winter night. The younger among you will not recall the event, but to those anywhere in their teens at the time, it is a day remembered even now.

The Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake was hosting its original Winter Dance Party on the night of February 2, 1959. Three of the performers that night, Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and J.P.Richardson, better known as “The Big Bopper” climbed into a small plane after the performance to go on to Moorhead, MN and the next night’s performance. They were avoiding the icy bus ride the bands would have to make and perhaps have the opportunity to get some extra sleep. Five miles later, they were all dead, no doubt because of ice in a carburetor or on the wings. Great talent lost forever, memorialized in the song “American Pie” and the movie “The Buddy Holly Story.”

The Surf is still as it was then, maintained by a non-profit organization, and hundreds of men and women come back every year to hear other greats play on the stage has become an iconic shrine, especially to Holly, the best known and likely a most talented songwriter. The place is frozen in that moment. It is eerie. It is a step back into another time, another century. The pictures of the greats who have performed in homage on the stage here line the walls and their autographs line the walls backstage. The telephone still hangs on the wall that was used to arrange for the plane. It is still used, this 30,000 square foot entertainment space with the 6,300 foot dance floor, for all sorts of functions in this “resort” town in northern most Iowa.

To those who still come here on cold February nights to remember, it is their Graceland, the place the music died.

BROUSING THROUGH THE MIDLANDS

2010-06-01T15:53:00.000-07:00

My route changed at a point south if Branson when the calculations said that the time available and the destination desired would not match. Dreams of the Smoky Mountain National Park faded for this year with the news that water logged state parks in Tennessee were closing before Memorial Day so they could be cleaned for when most United States residents proclaim it summer for three days and then disappear again until July and the camp grounds become far less crowded. Turning north my destination of choice became The Mississippi Palisades State Park in Savanna Illinois, just south of Galena. Galena is an artsy little town now, but is remembered in earlier times for where President U.S. Grant repaired after what was at the time considered a failed presidency and lived out his years writing his memoir. The memoir is not memorable. Grant’s standing as a President has risen over the last 50 years, however, either because of a new revisionism history or a subtle commentary on the state of politics then and now.

The park in Branson was a small one on Table Rock Lake. If one didn’t have a jet ski or a fishing boat, the most exciting moment every evening was when the paddle wheel gambling boat from Branson came down the lake passed the isthmus the park was on , went two miles further down the lake and turned to return , giving a loud blast on its horn when it passed. The park is one of the many with a total of 210 campsites maintained by the Corps of Engineers that cling to the lake and the underside of Missouri not more than a mile from the Arkansas border. It is beautiful hilly green country. The park I visited was called The “Old Hwy 87 Recreation Area.” It is a pleasant place but on that weekend it was full. Campsites are close together and it was well past warm and by the last night there was humid and hot. The kindly host told me it was the first weekend that was rain free in the past four, which explained the crowd. Following my usual practice of never making reservation, I always arrive early when weekends are involved. I was surprised to find there were only eight sites left. Happy as I was to be living in the van again, it seemed not to matter. I spent a good part of the next day finding routes that would shorten the trip given my three week sojourn in Kansas, ultimately deciding that I wanted to spend Memorial Day camping rather than hiding in a motel somewhere and that the park in Savanna that I had visited before also gave me the opportunity to take day trips from there until the big weekend arrived.

Palisades State park has many wonderful things. The birds and other wildlife are abundant, it is near the River and the people are both fun and interesting. The ratio of tents to monster motor homes clearly favors the tents, a trend I am noticing more this trip. They seem to enjoy the time outdoors more. That is, of course a huge generalization, but about the fourth time you see a 45 foot Class A “building” pull in with windows both heavily tinted and the shades down, the air conditioning on and the satellite television dish in place, you wonder why they left home at all.

The weather has cooperated, a hot Sunday was followed by a few showers but real rain hasn’t been seen since last Tuesday. It is Monday afternoon now as a type this, and the crowds are gone, returned to Chicago and places in between. A few of us remain, enjoying a partly cloudy and much cooler day. It is a peaceful time to pack more carefully than those who left early today and in the smug knowledge that we will enjoy a wonderful night with far less wood smoke and cool enough to perhaps even close a few windows.

Day trips from here included two notable places. Sebula Iowa, just across the bridge here is the only “island city” in the state of Iowa. This is perhaps not remarkable except for the fact that it is in the Mississippi River on the main channel and has never been flooded. How this improbable wonder has occurred remains a mystery to even most of the natives here since the River has been well into this Park many, many times in the past at it is but five miles away. I find it curious, but something I prefer to leave as something curious rather than scour the Internet to know why it is so. There was a music festival there this week end in a field that offered country and folk music, no shade, and camping for $25 dollars a night. There was not a level spot in the field and by the time my neighbors here went over to see what was up, it was as deep in mud as Woodstock must have been only on a much smaller scale.

I have passed the signs for West Branch Iowa enough times to finally be ashamed that I have never gotten off I-80 to see the President Herbert Hoover Museum located there. I spent Wednesday there and was delighted that I did. While “Bert,” the first of three children born to Jesse and Hulda Hoover, lived there only until he was six, when his father who was a blacksmith, died at 36 years old and he was separated from his other siblings and went to live with his Hulda’s, brother in Oregon when she died a mere 18 months later.

During his very distinguished career as an engineer and public servant, he acquired the two room house that he was born in and his father’s blacksmith shop. Over time he restored it and the rest, as they say is history.

He is remembered here for many things. He was the first President born west of the Mississippi River. He was an engineer, a diplomat, organized the relief effort for the devastated countries of Europe after World War I, which became the model for the UN agency, UNICEF as well as the prototype used by President Truman for the Marshall Plan after World War II. Yes, Black Tuesday occurred as the Stock Market crashed and banks closed on his watch, and his engineering and organizational talents left him without the intellectual tools or advisers to fix it. It is not memorialized here. It is his boyhood and the “values’ he took from this place to the first graduating class at Stanford University that is stressed. The Village of West Branch looks much the same in the old Hoover neighborhood. A blacksmith works in the shop. The streets are lined with homes from the same period. Hoover and his wife are buried here on a hill overlooking the restored Friends Meeting House much like the one Bert Hoover attended as a child. It is a charming place. Whatever one’s thoughts of Hoover as a President, it was a nice way to spend a spring afternoon.

West Branch is both quaint but not overcome by the memorial and museum. The blacksmith, a gregarious and knowledgeable man, quizzes the group of sixth graders in the tour group ahead of me as to what other President has a connection to West Branch. When none guess, he hints the he too, was a Quaker and a teacher finally recalls Richard Nixon. I learn then that The Millhouses, Mr. Nixon’s grandparents lived here in a craftsmen style house just three streets over and the young Nixon would visit here often in the summer as a child.

The “neighborhood” in the campground over the weekend was an interesting one. The sites are sufficiently removed that one can chose to ignore each other if that is your choice. To my left in a tent was a remarkably funny fellow with his girlfriend, both from Chicago. She was camping for the first time. He is a veteran and is hoping to take her with him this summer when he goes to a remote small lake in the Michigan where he camps on an island with a group of friends annually. She is a Choir Director. He is a trader on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange with all the sound and fury in his voice that one would assume of that vocation. He was once a profession indoor soccer goalie and a fanatic fan of the Black Hawks who are currently competing for the Stanley Cup with the accent of a true native of South Side Chicago. When they left on Monday, she seemed happy to have been here and he seemed hopeful that there would be more camping in their future. Despite their dispirit backgrounds they seemed remarkably well suited.

Across the road was a man and woman from Minnesota,, who travel with his Harley in a trailer behind a moderate sized RV. He and his companion were equally funny and charming. His son is finishing Medical school. He one of those “bikers” I have met who are sensitive to the noise it makes, moves slowly in the campground, has it because he loved to ride it, and would leave everyday for one of the many local events held around here this weekend. They both came back with funny anecdotes about what they had observed.

My travelling companion appears to have regained full form and strength and is as anxious as I to move on. We will go north and back west tomorrow toward Minnesota. Beyond that is yet to be announced. That is fine. The lack of Internet the past few days has left me without the ability to further plan the route. Soon we will go west to the Black Hills. Until then we will see what there is to see, and surely enjoy it as always.

A JOURNEY INTERRUPTED

2010-05-20T18:12:00.000-07:00

It is often hard to know where the line is of the wonder at a place and the mere acceptance of it is and thus it is time to move on. I have reached it here at nearly three weeks.

I have heard the stories now, having spoken with both the young and old of this place here in the far eastern corner of what my friends on the Coast would call “one of the square states.” They do not use that appellation because they find them strange but rather because they can’t tell these places with the precisely drawn borders one from another, assume they are all the same since they are “out here” and see no reason to know much more.

Some of the people have lived only here, something nearly unheard of in this day. Their lives seem limited to us, as if experience so geographically circumscribed could be neither rich nor satisfying. They assure me it can be both, and I nod and smile with some condescension yet I am reminded until quite recently in our history, the majority of us had lives this way and that our lives can also be both enlightened and constrained by so many other things besides the distances one travels. It is--life is--what one puts into it, whether that is at the PTA, the farmer’s market, or the time one spends on the road finding other places and other things. While the things one finds to be fascinated by or to enjoy may be different, there is no evidence for me that either is the more fulfilling experience.

So, having come to this place in the normal course of discovery, I have found myself constrained to stay here by forces I cannot control and thus have tried to find enjoyment in what these people, these geographically disadvantaged people, have. For a time, as always, that is easy. Their stories and their uniqueness are a discovery. I am an oddity, a different sort to them which lends to the mutual pleasure of the experience. Yet there is a point when one is no longer the interesting fellow in a camper from California, but rather someone who is just here, tolerated, no longer unique. I become someone who understands a little of the local custom and history, but has heard enough of it now to be satisfied, but does not live it.

What now, besides the weather and the bad karma of the local Walmart do we discuss? Well, we don’t. If one probes too much it is for them too personal and disruptive. They have a life here and they understand, accept, and in many ways and cases they thrive here, but it is not something they want to talk about much with the man with the broken van.

The weather is easy enough to talk about. It rains. It rains every day. It has for ten days. The obligatory inch a day that comes with living in or near the edge of tornado country. We can discuss hail—it’s size and frequency—and how much longer before the next extreme weather warning is issued. There is superficiality in that. Perhaps it is the cold and wind, the dark skies and the sameness of the landscape of the last several weeks that has made it seem so fruitless to pursue a deeper conversation. None are offered or attempted so now as my traveling companion has reached the end of her isolation in the cold damp recesses of the monoxide filled bay at the garage, I no longer care. There will be more rain, but a hope as we leave this place that the next place will be, not better, but different. These people, these happy, yet geographically isolated people, will not miss us and perhaps be glad we are gone.

I will be glad to resume a journey so long interrupted that it will be hard to remember where I was going and will need to alter the itinerary to allow for the time consumed here. I miss the woods, the search for the fauna, even the silence, the dark and quiet of the night . I did not come out here, now more than 2000 miles from home, to live in a room with plastic glasses, cleaned by a maid, in a building peopled each night by a different group of young eager looking men and women with the same black suitcases on wheels and laptop cases slung over their shoulder. These are the busy ones, those who, unlike me, who have no time to stand and watch but must be on to the next thing, the next client, and the next place.

Independence Kansas is city of 9848 people when they were last counted. Among those who are natives of this place are Bill Kurtis, the TV journalist, who still owns an interest in the radio station here, Alf Landon, the 7th Governor of Kansas and a Presidential a candidate in 1936, William Inge, the Pulitzer Prize winning playwright who wrote “Picnic,” Harry F. Sinclair, the founder of the Sinclair Oil Company also was born here. At one time, it is believed that more millionaires per capita lived in Independence than any other place in the United States. It is also remembered as the home of the first minor league team that the late Mickey Mantle signed to play with, the class D affiliate in Independence, which also played the first organized baseball game under lights.So it is not an insignificant place, just one I know enough of now and time to leave.

Tomorrow I will leave. I am informed by the childish face on the electric television set from nearby Tulsa, that it will be much as today here, still wet, still cool and still threatening to uproot trees, automobiles and people’s lives. La Coachasita and I will try to outrun it, move to a place to the east and south where it will not track us down with such fury. I will sort through the detritus of the past few weeks and try to find my way back to the more bucolic places in my world and in my mind where I am used to being this time of year.

It has been a nice place to visit, but it is more than time to take my leave.

YES, WE ARE STLL HERE

2010-05-08T19:20:00.000-07:00

I am still enjoying the sunsets on Elk Lake in Independence Kansas. The damage to La Coachasita was more extensive than thought. They may make me mayor if I'm not out of town soon. I may be the only Californian that took spring break in Kansas. The dealer here has been most helpful and I have been able to drive, albeit slowly, for the past three days so have not had to seek housing. The initial part sent was defective, caused more trouble, and Chrysler is now on the hook for the repairs.Thus, staying is more pleasant as a result.

We returned here to the park on Friday afternoon. The new parts from Dodge will arrive on Tuesday if all goes well and it will make this a good place to have a motel stop, do the laundry, and shopping. My warrior friend will be up on the lift for two days while machinations too complicated explain will be performed. I am not sure now where we will go from here. The Missouri park system has been annoying me by asking for reservations, I refuse to make them. I may go down into Arkansas after I find out just how bad the parks were harmed in Tennessee. Our ultimate goal is still the Smoky Mountains and then we will head north if we stay anywhere near the itinerary.

The weather has turned chilly and it will rain next week, so being indoors Tuesday and Wednesday doesn't sound like a bad idea. I will see television again then, I expect, and remember n why I haven't missed it.

There are a number of locals are here for the weekend, although it is still early for a full campground this time of year and I am sure that the fact that we went to 40 degrees last night from 60 the night before also might have something to do it. They are amusing and friendly sorts who find the California license plates a bit mysterious. Some will spend Mother's Day here.I have been to most parts of the Wildlife Refuge, taking a long trip today out to where the birds were not expecting me and saw many that are not common around the campground noise. It is a peaceful and contemplative place of prairie grass and trees, many hollowed by the omnipresent woodpeckers, flickers, and occasionally used has places that eagles perch, steely eyed, looking for prey. The Blue Herons moved as the number of people increased. It is almost as if they know it is the weekend. I enjoyed the quiet and again was reminded how pleased I am to have found it.

When I get the rest of the trip figured out, my faithful friend running properly again, and to a new destination, I'll be in touch.

DOROTHY AND TOTO ARE NOT HERE

2010-05-04T19:18:00.000-07:00

Most people that have reason to drive across the country, find there are certain words that make them disagreeable and induce immediate ennui.

Kansas is one. As Henry James once famously said, a word such as that denotes, “…a long reluctant march through enemy territory” for many people. It is seen as flat and faceless, a piece of the earth to be traversed, peopled by corn fed yahoos that do something involved with the earth or cows. It has no real cultural merit except perhaps that it was where Gram’s house was, the place that Dorothy and Toto left so violently and wanted come back to so badly.

If your route is the fastest, it is on an Interstate and grinds from cloverleaf to cloverleaf with the cruise control set at 75. There is an occasional stop at lookalike gas stations, or a plastic fast food palace, or a stay in a chain hotel. For all you see, you might as well be flying. You are not because you have more baggage than they will allow you to check. A memorable “blonde’ joke from New York has a man suggesting that the women go to the Midwest if she wants to find a good, solid man. Her reply is memorable, since for many New Yorkers, the settled universe ends at the Hudson River. She said, “Oh, you mean like to Pennsylvania?”

Reamus must object. All those things are “out here” but there is so much more if one takes the time to leave the fatty burgers and wide roadways to others. For example a wildlife refuge in the southeast corner of the state is nearly the size of Orange County California. It contains all manner of flora and fauna, eagles, blue heron, song birds, woodpeckers. Its lake has enough fish in it seems to feed the entire state.

This place is near Independence Kansas and is known as the Elk Lake Refuge and it is special. It was once part of an Osage Indian Reservation until they were moved with so many other tribes, to reservations in Oklahoma. The early settlers along the river contended with the Dalton gang, floods, and the obligatory tornadoes that spawn here.

The happy times are celebrated too. In Neodosha the first oil well west of the Mississippi is honored. Laura Ingalls Wilder, the author famous for the Little House on the Prairie series is remember for the time she was growing up here, and the first organized baseball game was played under the lights at a field in Independence. This Refuge came about as a result a Corps of Engineer Project for flood control and was completed in 1966 and while it cost 16 million dollars, the flood damage aversion since then, is estimated at 217 million. Whatever the cost/benefit ratio is in flood control, the refuge also provides habitat for both migratory and non-migratory water fowl and all sorts of wildlife.

It is a wondrous place with one of the prettiest lakes I have ever seen and most thoughtfully laid out state park which sits on leased land in the middle of it all. I am a resident of it now for longer than I had anticipated. In fact, by the time I leave I may qualify for residency and be able to run for governor of the state if I like.

I am here this long because my faithful traveling companion has been grievously wounded and is, I am sure, in great pain that she suffers in the noble silence of her workhorse heritage. La Coachasita has soldiered on proudly and has brought us to this bucolic place despite her worsening condition. On Saturday, we were forced to drive from Logan New Mexico to a State Park near Wichita because a ranger neglected to tell the person answering the phone at the park in Meade Kansas that all water and electric spaces had been reserved for the weekend by a large group of people named Spencer. So we drove on for more hours than usual, logging 490 miles for the day, which is well over our usual limit. While making this forced march, the check engine light came on near the end of the day. It had been seen earlier in the trip while leaving Deming, NM. The computer codes were read then and it was either something very bad or something benign that could wait until we returned home. The consensus was that it was likely the benign one since the van did not appear to be running or shifting roughly and had no problems for the next 900 miles. Suddenly, late on that long afternoon drive, it reappeared and my sense was that it was not as simple as it seemed. La Coachacita was in great pain.

One of the laws of long term camping on the move is that if you have a serious problem, it will occur either very late on a Friday afternoon, or over a weekend if you are stupid enough to still be driving in the rural countryside then. Most of Kansas is closed on Sunday and the closing begins around noon the day before. Needing fuel, for example, and traveling the back roads as always, I came to a town with one gasoline station. If you had a credit card, you could buy gas, if you did not, you couldn’t. No one was there. Only the “pay at the pump” service was available. I asked the man who pulled in after me if this was normal. He snorted that not only was it normal, but it was beginning to be true on Fridays as well. It was the view of the native that the owner made enough money doing repair work four days a week that he could run his “hobby” farm the other days.

I have traveled through the very southern part of the state this trip along U.S. 54/75 and U.S. 160. The small cities along the way have sculptures on the street corners of renovated downtown sections. The routes I travel here do not have a city “bypass” as so many other places do. They want the traffic. They need it. One bronze statue that memorializes the Dalton gang, I swear was by Remington, the famous western sculpture. Had the traffic not been what it was I would have a picture to prove it. The renovations are not recent. Some of the stores are now empty. This was pre-recession building, when all were so optimistic, when money was real, banks told the truth, and people spent it with pride on their towns. It is quite wonderful to stop on these streets and see these pieces of art, these signs of civic pride. It gives one hope that the Heartland will be back. Not soon perhaps, but they are the reminders of what there was here and, we can hope, will be here again. This stubborn civic pride does not die easily. It does not die as quickly as businesses leave. These art pieces are a memory of what it was. It is what it can be again. They are proud of that here. They should be.

If express shipping brings the new pieces for the heart of my proud warrior friend tomorrow, she will have five hours of surgery on Thursday and we will move east the next day. In the meanwhile, the weather is lovely, high 70’s and little humidity, and even the wind is down for the week so we will enjoy this place of beauty and be glad that we found it.

While I am here I will try to get a picture of one of those eagles that seem to come by only when the camera is somewhere out of reach. Our next stop will be in Missouri near a state forest named for Davey Crockett and then it will be time to move indoors for a day or so, air the place out, and see whether Nashville Tennessee is still under water and contemplate the next destination.

THEN THERE WAS MARIA

2010-04-28T21:04:00.000-07:00

“Way out here they got a name for rain and wind and fire., The rain is Tess, the fire’s Joe and they call the wind Maria"

from "Paint Your Wagon"

As we breezed through the cool desert the first four days, there was a wonderful view of what the place can look like when it has been watered more often than it is supposed to be in one winter and how pleasant it is with a light breeze wafting through the Saguaro and the other brands of Cacti I see but cannot name. All look as if they had an extended blooming season this year as the “blossoms” are just now brown and beginning to fall.

I see by the log of previous trips, am a bit earlier than last year. That may be why there are so many people still here and the weather so pleasant. Arizona, the land of the abandoned Rest Area and State Parks, was one long Interstate highway and a talking book. The only break from the unrelenting views of mesquite and cacti was a short visit at lunch to Dateland, a town I have written of before. Patton’s Army trained there and it still serves as a base for some Marine “desert activities” about which little is known, since they come and go by helicopter. The delightful date palm trees and the trinity of a store, restaurant, and gas station remain at the exit ramp. It has unfortunately been rebuilt, and not in a good way. The restaurant where one gave your order to a middle aged waitress with the leather skin of a desert native as late as last year is gone, as is the separate gift shop and the gas station across the road. In place of this walk back into history, one now finds a combined building housing all three functions and the food available is a Quiznos sandwich shop, run by young women in a hurry to move you from the “order” window to the “pay here” window. The date shakes are sold in the same fast food fashion near the door. The gift shop now specializes in double entendre T-shirt, hats, and other such paraphernalia one would not have found in the old place. This is progress of course, but sad to see still, since there was a quaintness to the old places, remembered so fondly by the World War II soldiers that trained there and who considered the day pretty exciting if they got to sit on the porch at the store and count the cars on the 4:30 PM train. The only thing that remains the same is that the place still has no name and the RV park spaces are sold in the gift shop. The town itself is about a half mile from the highway to the north. There have been a few desultory attempts to make Dateland a place to winter for the snow birds, but its remoteness, while charming in its way, lacks the amenities of Casa Grande and Yuma for those who do such things. So it is remembered now a just another possible fuel stop as one rushes down I-8 to join I- 10.

The pleasant first night at Picacho Peak State park, a stop some 430 miles from home is longer than I like to drive the van in one day. It is the place I stay most often however because it means in the morning I will leave the state behind and soon climb into New Mexico’s mountains and be greeted by green things that do not have spines as foliage.

Unless Arizona can figure out how finance its future, it will close this park in June, so it may well be my last visit. Most of the state parks in the northern part of the state are already closed. There is talk of having the Indian tribes take them over, or lease them in some way. It may work out but, like Dateland, it is not likely to be a transparent change, and these pleasant rural places will become commercial and that offends some sensibility of mine. But, while they are at it, I surely hope they can get someone interested in running the rest stops. The desert is a flat place, cars pulled to the side of the road are suspicious, and very little suitable foliage. Spontaneous voiding of bodily fluids along a roadside can be a chancy thing. For now, be prepared if you plan a long drive there.

By the next night Rockhound State Park near Deming was home. It was my first visit there and it is indeed populated by people who seem to be fascinated by rocks. When they aren’t climbing to the top of the peaks nearby on well worn paths, they are collecting samples. It was nearly full, and when I expressed my surprise that it would be this time of year to one of the maintenance crew, he assured me it usually was until July and not as overnight guests but there for a week or more. There was much walking up and down hills capped by a sunset run up to the top and back by what looked like a local football team who then clambered back into three cars and left us. I was camped at the top of the hill in the campground and could see Deming in the distance and the Interstate as well. It was a pleasant evening to be out as it had the night before.

In the morning the wind came early, before first light. There was a slight rocking and some things blowing about but it was a breeze, nothing more until the second hour on the road when I found that either the wind was blowing hard in gusts, or my wheels were rushing in and out of alignment. I left the Interstate about then for what I hope will be the next 1,000 or more miles and was climbing the mountain near Alamogordo to a height of 8,250 feet give or take a foot or so and found it most disconcerting. It gathered force as it will in the mountains and when I reached Artesia on the other side and turned south it was a gale so far as this city boy was concerned. NOAA weather began issuing warnings about blowing dust and even more ominous threats for the mountain passes. I reached Lake Brantley just north of Carlsbad and spent the evening trying to decide if it was really as cold as I thought it was or whether it was just a combination of the wind and 5 per cent humidity. Scrubbing the windshield before sunset became a laughing matter as the water dried as fast as I could apply it. After scraping the true adult bodies off the driver’s side I gave up and found other pursuits.

The next day for me is not always a planned endeavor as many of you know, but this day I was in Carlsbad to see the Caverns. The wind was down early so I went off to climb the mountain in which the caverns are located south of town. They are remarkable, and there formation is mind boggling. They are also cool and there is never a wind. The rocks and pools are extraordinary and on a warm day like today the nearly constant temperature and real humidity was a welcome change and worth the trip. On the way out, a Ranger I spoke to upped the ante on the coming wind, suggested I get off the mountain by three and that gust of 60 to 70 knots were expected by midnight in the Guadalupe Mountains. Heading back north seemed the best idea, so this comes to you form Brantley Lake. There are fewer here tonight, most overnighters who have sought a stationary place until the wind figures it out. Two 17 foot "Scamp" trailers came in as dark came on. They are, besides small, made mostly of fiberglass which makes them delightful to pull with the family mini-van, but the story one of the driver’s told me was all I needed to know about the aerodynamics.

We will huddle here then, perhaps only tonight, but if the wind is bad, again tomorrow and then push north through Portales and on to Logan and into Kansas where wind is a way of life, but perhaps it may be gentler. Even in good weather it is a long warm and very straight ride through to I-40. Logan is just above there on U.S. 54 which angles like the hypotenuse of a triangle across a slice of both Texas and Oklahoma, emerging in Liberal. By then it will be the weekend and time to take a break. Somewhere.

HERE WE GO AGAIN

2010-04-22T15:43:00.000-07:00

It is is spring. It is late coming to us this year, no doubt the price we pay for having the mildest February anyone can remember in a long time. It is time to load the essentials and be off again.

This year is different. As it was the year I went up the Mississippi River, there are no family stops planned on this trip, so the itinerary does not include a reprise of last year’s dash across the continent in the rain. Those of you who read faithfully will recall that I spent a mere week driving to the Right Coast last year and then spent most of the spring and early summer trying to find warmth and a dry place to be with only some success. I am hoping for better weather.

Most of my trips have a theme, although I confess this one has several. There are two Presidential Museums on my list, Gerald Ford and Herbert Hoover. The former has a museum in his old congressional district since he is remembered by the people of Michigan more as their congressman of many years than the three or so he spent at the White House. His official papers are housed at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The Museum is in Grand Rapids. The Hoover home near Davenport Iowa is said to be quite lovely. I am hoping by the time I get there summer will have come to the mid-West this year.

To begin, La Coachasita and I will need to march across the desert as always, but if the weather isn’t too hot, we will linger a while in the “other Carlsbad” where the caverns are in New Mexico. To avoid whatever it is they are trying to do with all the soldiers and guns in Juarez/ El Paso, we will head north and travel a good U.S. route through Clovis and Tucumcari on up into southern Kansas and then go east as far as Vicksburg. The last time I was at the Civil War battlefield there it was pouring rain, and I accompanied three Brits who had a vague notion of what this “colonial war they had” was about. I hope for more pleasant weather and a little less tour guide duty this time. After that, the plan says we will cross Tennessee making use of their excellent state parks along the way and end up at the Great Smoky Mountain National Park just east of Pigeon Forge, Gatlinburg, and Dollywood, the later named for Dolly Parton a native of those parts and a founder of this historical theme and recreation area. It is “Quite Something” I am told by those who have visited. I took a miss last time and will likely this time, preferring to head into the park to the Dome and Cadys Cove and other places remembered for their serene and bucolic beauty. I have not been there for about eight years and I have always wanted to go back. If we get that far we will drop into Georgia after stopping at the Biltmore Mansion and make an about face well north of Atlanta and go north. It will be May buy then and we will find the big River and follow it up as far as Illinois. A side trip to Michigan will get us to the Ford Museum and then rejoin the River near Galena, go on to Davenport and then up to the land of thousands of small towns which, as you know, continue to fascinate me. Lake Bemidji or Itasca, the headwaters of the Mississippi would be the apex if I get that far north. It will be a weather driven decision. Then we will turn west in a descending route through South Dakota, Colorado, Utah and home by the fourth of July.

The trip is much anticipated this year. Its lack of structure is appealing. The book is finished and getting what publicity it can. I feel the need to unplug from the world of zaniness that has overtaken us all. To add to my enjoyment, I have finally entered the digital age of photography sufficiently I hope to share on these pages what we see along the way.

There are still endless possibilities out there, still so many small towns to savor and so little time. I hope I will find some that are as charming, amusing, and pleasant the many that have gone before. At ten years of age now, my faithful road warrior seems as anxious as I am to be off. I am watching her oil and other dietary intake more closely now as the odometer spins past 110,000 miles. Jack, the RV Genius, has pronounced her fit for duty, probably more so than I, so we will once more drive into the sunrise on a Sunday morning in search of the never seen and the things we need to see again.

I'd be pleased if you come along.

THERE IS NO CRYING IN BASEBALL

2010-04-01T15:20:00.000-07:00

The end is near. The teams that will play Major League professional baseball are beginning their trips home. Most will stop in cities along the way to play one or two more exhibition games and then on Monday, the season begins and the games will all count. The long road through 161 games, and with luck, the Division and League Championships as well as the World Series has begun. For two teams that no one yet can name, it will not end until one dark early November night.

This is an odd time for a few remaining players. They are making their way north, east, and west with the Major League club without the certain knowledge that they will still be a member of the coveted 25-man roster on Monday morning. Those difficult conversations in the Manager’s office will take place for some as late a Sunday night. For others it will come sooner, and for most it has already occurred as they “broke camp” in the quaint language of the sport. Some will be “released,” a charming way to remind them they are of no further use while others will be re-assigned to minor league clubs to await the opening of their season of continued hope.

For these “last cuts” it is a difficult time. They have families, possessions, households, and responsibilities to attend. It is for them perhaps that one recalls the famous line of Tom Hanks’ character, the habitually inebriated manger in the movie, “A League of Their Own,” which chronicled the famous women’s league started by some team owners in the Midwest during World War II to fill the entertainment void by the loss of so many players to the military. If there is indeed no crying in baseball, this is a time of year when it is tested.

Returning from my trip this week to the final week of games in Arizona, I reflected on how difficult it must be for these “may be” players, as in, “he may be on the Opening Day Roster,” which is the way their managers were describing them to the press. They have wives, they have children that need to be enrolled in schools, and the hundreds other things in life that must be taken care of by all of us. Yet these men who have chosen this nomadic profession are not yet sure in some cases what state they will be living in next week, or what their salaries will be. It seems a hard life, no matter their talents.

While on this last trip, I saw a young man, Wyatt Toregas, catching for the Cleveland Indians. He had a good day, two hits out of three attempts and he scored a run. He played defense well, so far as I could see. He was, I learned, one of those “may be” players and had not yet been told where he would open the season. In fact to complicate the other facets of his life even more, there were said to be two options for Mr.Toregas being quoted in the press. He was either going to be the starting catcher for the Cleveland Indians on Monday or, improbably, the back-up catcher to the young rising star on their minor league AAA team in Columbus. Those were his choices. He either played his way into the majors, or tutored the youth who one day would replace the man who replaced him. He would be one of the 8 players standing proudly in a major league uniform along the third base line after being introduced to the crowd on Opening Day of the season. If not, he was going to be teaching a younger man in Columbus the fine art of handling a pitching staff with minimal playing time. In the world that I work in that is like being fired and being asked to train the man’s son who replaced you who will then replace him, perhaps as soon as next year. Worse, he already knew this. It is very hard to remain calm and play well enough in the spring to "win" a job as a Major League everyday player. Imagine the added pressure of knowing that if you did well, but just not well enough, you would be leaving the team and the salary behind to labor as a part-time player on a minor league team. What, I wondered, were the conversations like he had with his family? How do you plan to live in either Cleveland or Columbus at the same time? Was the pressure worth it? Was the salary differential, not to mention the pride involved, a reasonable price to pay to continue to play the game of his childhood?

Mercifully, the wait for Wyatt Toregas is over. On Thursday night he heard the words that all players dread, “‘Skip wants to see you in his office.” Manny Acta, a kind and knowledgeable baseball manager, this year’s guidance for a woeful Cleveland Indian franchise told Wyatt he was being assigned to Columbus, so his wait is over. To be fair, it should be noted that he has never played a full season in the major leagues and is in his late twenties. He has time, but not much in this age concious sport. He is a college graduate and has been playing professionally since 2004. There is nothing left to do now but decide whether to report or not, to continue to pursue his dream or find a different vocation. Getting on with it might make him happier in the long term, but I am sure that he believes he is good enough or he would have never been given this option. Up there in “the Show” more than baseballs take funny bounces. People get injured, go into hitting slumps and in a month, two, or even three a chance to play may come. I do not have to wonder which option I would have chosen. I am also sure that somewhere in Columbus right now, there is a woman looking for a place to live and a school good enough for children named Toregas.

2010-03-08T17:36:00.000-08:00

THE WORK OF SPRING

A rite occurs on the Right Coast that I have learned of from family members who are part of the Red Sox Nation. On or about the 15th of February every year they offer a toast to the sign of the coming spring, no matter that there is 38 inches of snow on the ground and the grinding cold of daily life still saps their strength. It is “Truck Day.” It is celebrated by the most zealous and reverential off Boston Red Sox fans for it is the surest sign that spring will come. It is the day 40-foot semis leave Fenway Park in Boston for Fort Meyer, Florida with the paraphernalia needed to conduct spring training. Thus, as it is inevitable that Sox baseball will come, they toast the spring. No groundhogs needed, just seven or eight diesels pulling away from “The Fen” is enough for them know.

There is much rain in Arizona this year and cold in the camps in Florida. Yesterday it was 55 and raining in the Phoenix Arizona area, yet the rites of the baseball spring continue there. There is grousing among the coaches and managers that the proper work will not be accomplished in this short season of evaluation. The players worry of minor yet nagging injuries—pulled muscles and sore arms--due to the lingering wet fields and cold weather which has replaced the warmth and thus the hope of spring. It is a grim March there for the fans as well, those from Milwaukee and Chicago and Cleveland, who have fled the frozen tundra to find only a stiff breeze and low 60’s or rain showers and 50’s in a place they usually find 80’s not uncommon.

The players have been reporting since late February and began there 31 game exhibition seasons on Thursday and Friday. So the long days and nights of the season have begun. It is time to show that one has retained the skill of last year, or that one has improved enough to go to what the players call “The Show.” Or that there is still enough gas left in the tank for one more year as a role player, the veteran to provide cohesiveness, to teach attitude and patience. He who will keep his head as all around him lose theirs as it were.

The newspapers, having space now that the Olympics are over, begin to carry small stories. One does not have to go to the back pages and the tiny agate type to find baseball news. These are intriguing times for those who have a passion for the journey from March when all have reported through sometime in early November when this grind will end with two teams in a stadium somewhere trying to become the next World Series Champions. The Commissioner dearly hopes it will not be in a cold weather city since it will occur nearer Thanksgiving this year than Labor Day. Part of what makes the game worth following as fans, is the hope the Minnesota Twins and Milwaukee Brewers will make the trip just to see what baseball can be like at night, in Minnesota and Wisconsin, in November.

The usual drama will play out this spring. As I prepare to return to what I hope by then will be a warm Valley of the Sun I read with more interest the doings of the great, the once great, and the never will be great players that have assembled. If one can count on anything, there will be surprises as always. There will be a rookie who amazes everyone though he shouldn’t who will sustain it through the year. There will be another who will be back riding a bus in the minors when he returns to a conscious state and his natural playing level sometime very early in May but who, at this moment, is being labeled "can't miss" by some ink stained wretch in the sporting press. There will be a veteran left for dead at the end of last season by one team who will rise like a phoenix with another to amaze us once more. Sadly, there will also be the everyday, consistent, perhaps former All-Star player of many years who will find that the Navy SEAL’s motto, “Yesterday was the last good day of your life” now applies to him. He will stumble and fail at this game he has played since his boyhood. Its most basic tenets will elude him in all ways he has found so natural for so long. It will be hard to watch this man-child of thirty something years of age become confused, frustrated, and by August sitting at the end of the bench wondering what happened, knowing that a “fresh start” next spring with this team is out of the question. In the argot of the game, you can put a fork in him, he’s done. It is over and he is neither adult enough to understand the reasons why nor what to do with the rest of his life.

Just as a skilled aerobatic pilot can make an inside loop look easy, these men in the strange pants and a leather glove on one hand make this seem that way too. It isn’t. There are 27 major league teams. Each have a 40 man roster of which 25 wear the uniform of the major league club on a given day and six of them are usually pitchers. Do the math. 675 men make The Show and only 8 players start for each team everyday, the rest, the two hundred that will be in each camp this spring find another place to play or something else to do the rest of their lives. That is a tough pyramid to climb in any profession and even harder one to stay on top of once you have.

Some who have been there a long time refuse to agree that it is time to step down. There seem to be more of them this year. They are once fine players and fiercely proud men who refuse to accept that they are closer to forty than twenty years old. Their skills have eroded and they move a step slower, see the ball as a hitter too late. They are forced to move on. A manager can’t afford to carry one of the 25 that hits all his home runs in batting practice at 5 o'clock when the game is at 7. He needs everyday players, so they release these men because they can’t do it anymore. It’s a business decision not personal. Some don’t see it that way so they find a place to sign on as a “non-roster” invitee to the rites of spring. They talk of trying to “catch on”, and say words like “a better fit”, or “be a good man in the clubhouse.” They accept the humiliation of a minor league contract with a slim chance to make the team. I will see some of these too, and either be gladdened by their return or saddened by the certain knowledge that by Opening Day in April, they will be home watching it as I will.

These moments are coming in this world barely understood, but so enjoyed by the fanatics that follow it. It is a world without pity, yet with moments that are as touching as a love story. There are memories forever of those who do it so well you watch in awe. Errors in effort are not tolerated, less than perfection is expected but not admired. It is a game where a thirty three percent success rate with a bat in your hand will get you enshrined in the Hall of Fame. To do that, your heart has to work 100 percent of the time and your reflexes must be quick enough to see it, understand it, and hit it in less than two seconds. That is the difference between the legends and the others, the ones called “great” and the ones called “useful.”

So spring is here, despite the rain of yesterday and the blustery winds and cool temperatures of today. There are men at work again in the Valley of the Sun. Very soon, it will be time to go and see as many as I can and enjoy once again the balletic rituals, the triumphs, and sadness of the time.

THE DANCER

2010-02-13T20:30:00.000-08:00

I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears, of all my life! ---and if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Sherwood Woody Goldfein, a good and gentle man, loving husband, father, and one of the best dancers in the City of New York left our family this week.

Any lasting memory of him would have to include watching him dance to the music he loved. He did it so well and gracefully that other men stopped, watched, and realized they were mere poseurs in the presence of one who truly knew how. I saw him at my neice's wedding where there were more partners for him to dance with than there were songs that could be played. He acquiesced to each request with a gentle smile. Every partner, whatever their age, seemed to feel special for having shared a dance with him.

Woody was my cousin's husband. They were in love in a remarkable way not experienced by many in this world. They were soulmates, business partners, best friends, and parents to a special and beautiful daughter. Their unyielding optimism showed us how good a life was, how precious love is, and how very happy two people could be. They were the light that filled the room, he with his gentle grace, she with her wit, and the laughter of both. He was loved by us all and no less so now that he has gone. I am certain that he will have the same effect in whatever universe he has now entered.

In his work and his life, Woody expressed his zest for what he did as he did in dance. He was perpetually in motion. He embraced everything with a relentless energy well into his seventy-seventh year. When he no longer could, he left us, and we are lessened by it. We will miss this man of kindness, and boundless energy uniquely in love with his partner, lover, friend, and spouse.

Our hope is that Woody is now in a place where he will hear and feel the music he loved so much, and move to it as gracefully as we remember.

2010-01-30T15:05:00.000-08:00

A NOVEL ENDING

For more than three years as many as ten people lived here in my office. They were of my invention yet had lives of their own.

Three years ago I broke my left leg. The importance of this and distinguishing which one lies only in the fact that four years ago I had my right leg surgically repaired. It had been broken nine years earlier and never fully healed. My life has in some ways then, been measured by these episodes of leg damage, like markers along a highway.

The cast was from hip to toes. I was confined to home most of the time. After two months, I ran out of books of any interest, games to play, and crossword puzzles to do. For reasons not at all clear to me now, I wondered what it would be like to write dialogue. I have written all my life, but never done it. I was vaguely aware that there were rules about how it is done. I have also never writtten fiction. All of the writing I have done in my life—one should not count the political speeches—has been non-fiction. This lack of knowledge of the rules and format was not a barrier to my trying. It is hard to find something I will not try just because there are rules of which I am unaware.

I wondered what it would be like to write a story of two people explaining themselves to each other only through the spoken word as written on the page. That is how it began. As I did it, I began to see a beginning and an and end to a story and I rushed from one to the other with little regard for rules just to get it set down so I would not forget it. That done, I realized there was real work involved now. I needed not only to understand the rules, but also find a voice for each character, a time and a place for the story, and all manner of other details. Thus, three years have passed, the leg has long ago healed, and life as I know it has resumed, and I have had these two people and their friends, who do talk a great deal, yet need narrative to help them along their way now and then, living with me all this time.

Writers often tell of reading things the next day and wondering who had written it. This doesn’t happen to the non-fiction writer since they are writing about events and there are a set of facts or a piece of history to set down in what one hopes is eloquent prose. In a novel, there so many variables such as tone of voice, anger, fear, petulance, greed, and emotions in the voices and the moods of the characters. I was astonished to find it true. These people took over, they wrote about themselves it seems, and I as humble servant, provided the word processing and only followed along.

After my last adventure on the Oregon coast, it seemed time to finish this thing, this novel of mine. I was close to finding the right voices, creating the right words in the right order so that these people would be understandable to me and perhaps to others.

These people were of course dysfunctional or they would not be in a novel. As much as I enjoyed creating them and living with them and their myriad problems and successes everyday here in my cell-like space, I was growing tired of them, and they of me I should think. After all, none of us was getting any younger or more interesting. I read the book by my estimate, between 29 and 35 times from front to back and back to front and middle to each end. I changed them, I coddled them and cajoled them, I lowered their voice, I raised it, I made them more appealing or less so. I gave them new friends, I took away old ones, as some characters left as the story developed along quite different lines than I had originally imagined. Whole chapters came and went, added because they were needed, deleted because they represented some repetition or other nonsense even I could not fully appreciate or understand.

On Thursday night, I pushed the final keys that sent the proofs to the publisher. I will live in terror now until I have a book in hand and am sure that there are not just as many mistakes in grammar, syntax, and spelling as there were before they were read. After that I am sure I will be equally afraid that no one will understand this fiction that came from somewhere inside my head to the printed 500 plus pages that now embody something called “Sunset House.”

It was written down with care since it was there on my "Bucket List." It was somewhere in the top ten of things left to do, close to bungee jumping and above going scuba diving again. “Write a novel” has now been lined through.

It is done, and I will soon hold it in my hand and rejoice in its creation even if I am the only one that understands it and is glad that it was created at all. Such is the work of a wordsmith. We write to satisfy our own egotistical needs. If we are very lucky, we find an audience for our words. They do not matter so much, that audience. The memory of creating these---to me real—people was what brought me my pleasure. Should the reading of it by others bring them a smile, a moment of peace, a laugh, or a thoughtful moment, it will surely please me greatly to know I have contributed a moment to their lives.

The files have been backed-up into storage. All traces of these characters have been removed from my computer. They are now a memory. I will wonder about them from time to a time. Even now, I suffer the literary equivalent of separation anxiety.

I will post something when the book is published. It will be available through both Amazon and The Barnes and Noble web sites, but alas, unless I find a new talent for marketing in a life marked by the inability to sell guns in a riot, it will not be in any bookstore you know. It is published by iuniverse, a division of Barnes and Noble, in case someone should be foolish enough to want to read it.

The royalties that come to me from this printing will be passed on to the relief and rebuiding efforts in Haiti, likely to Doctors Without Borders, a group that has spent many years there and will spend many more. Should anyone be foolish enough to buy it, at least the profits will be for a good cause.

The writing, to paraphrase the recently late and iconic J.D. Salinger, is for the writer’s pleasure, and not for the profit it might bring. Of course, the cynic in me notes that he said that after the second printing of the wildly successful Catcher in the Rye.

Now I have turned my attention to planning my annual pilgrimage to the Valley of the Sun to immerse myself in my passion for the game called baseball and the men who play it so well. Then it will be April and time to be back on the road for three months. The Smoky Mountains seem to call again this year. I was there seven years ago and likely missed more than I saw. It will be warm there then and warm will be good come April and May. The proud road warrior, and my faithful companion, La Coachasita, will be ready after a few minor repairs. She fights stubbornly onward at 108,550 miles, and shows no sign of her age. From her acceleration, it is clear that she has a renewed zest for a trip.

In a few months then, this travelogue called Reamus will continue. I apologize for his absence in the humility of knowing he was likely not missed by many or all that much.

I have been reading your blogs with pleasure these past few months while the “clerical work” of galley proofing and cover design has been done. Thank you for continuing to educate and amuse me with your writings and photography. I hope you will find something in the scribbling here come spring that will do the same.

2009-10-31T18:03:00.000-07:00

Going Home

What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare.
---William Henry Davies, “Leisure”

There have been longer trips. There have been trips more challenging. There have been few that have been as peaceful and fun. La Coachasita provided some moments of concern but returns in good shape with only small wounds to remind me of this northwest adventure.

I saw old friends, old places, and new places, met new characters, had excellent weather and except for the one storm, it remained warm until the end… As I left the Redwood Coast on Wednesday there was frost on the ground and the cold weather was clearly coming. The wind that had been suspiciously absent most of the trip was up, and it felt colder than it probably really was.

It was time to move south. My last stop was in the Santa Yenez Mountains behind Santa Barbara for three nights. It is a favorite place where at migratory birds from eagles hawks, ducks on the lake, and song birds to numerous to catalogue or name can be seen this time of year. The weather turned warm on the last day as the clocks changed and it seemed a good time to go home.

The trip plan, as the poet said, was to find a place I liked “to stand and stare.” It is good for the body and the soul, something we should all do now and then. I have seen television once in six weeks, read two newspapers and generally turned down the cacophony of the appliances of the world to find the serenity that can come with such silence. It would seem I missed little except the continuing saga the news reports of things there when I left and some boy who was and then wasn’t in a balloon somewhere in the Midwest and two Continental Airline pilots-- now former pilots-- who forgot they were en route to Minneapolis.

It is nice to have such wonderful weather to end the trip. Surprising this large and now green park due to the six inches of rain last week is quiet. The fishermen are at the lake for the day, but the campground is largely unused.

There are exceptions. An LA flock of four thirty somethings in a motor home and a trailer arrived on Friday, unloaded two mountain bikes, four bicycles, a remote control plane and a kite of vast proportions. They are affable bunches who yet wear their wireless phone devices even while kite flying. I am not sure have ever seen so many toys come with four people who have spent the last two days either sitting and laughing, or sitting and eating. I was fully prepared for more noise than I thought I would find necessary but so far they have collapsed into the arms of Morpheus early and remained there late. I will no doubt wake them all when I pull out tomorrow from across the wide road here.

The only other constant companions until today was a man and wife who, so far as I could tell, never uttered a word while in camp, insisted on parking in the space next to me (there were many others available) and were actually in the park and awake or out doors for perhaps six hours in two days. At about one today, I came back from the lake and found they had gone. This is not the sort of place that attracts those who park and go off to see the sights. This is the sight they come to see usually as it is miles from any town. While here and out, he wore a sweatshirt advertising a tattoo parlor, a straw hat and smoked a large cigar. When they arrived, she remained in the truck until trailer had been parked and arranged. When it was done, she ambled in and an hour later they left and returned around midnight.

Somehow, this seems all the confirmation I need that I am back in Southern California.

Home will be a good place to be tomorrow. Thank you all for coming on this rather short—for me at least—trip of 2200 miles. I have enjoyed your company, your e-mails and posts on the blog. Spring is the next significant trip with a book to publish between now and then. I will be going I am certain, where is yet a question. North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains have only been cursorily explored and that is in my mind now.

But much will happen between now and then, so we shall see.

There will be pictures later and perhaps some words over the winter. I hope you all stay well and stay in touch.

2009-10-26T14:41:00.000-07:00

THE FAIRY TALE ENDS

The will be no championship in Anahiem this year. The Los Angeles Angels of Anahiem lost the American League Championship to the New York Yankees in the sixth game in the first hour of this morning Eastern Daylight Time.

The Angels had won two of the three games played in California and nearly forced a seventh and deciding game in New York. Shortly after huge clock in the outfield struck midnight and while over 50,000 people in the stadium held their collective breath, Gary Matthews Jr., the son of a former major leaguer, took one last mighty swing.

He missed.

"This was a special group," Mike Scioscia their manager said after it was over, "but they were the better team. " Mike reflected on a reporters question about the long season and said that he will not soon forget this group, what they had fought through this remarkable season full of injuries, losing streaks, and a tragedy most had never experienced in their young lives that was so much larger than the game these men play. They are gone now, this team that carried Nick Adenhart's memory and his jersey forward every day and wherever they went all year. Many will leave for other teams and more money, others will be traded, some will retire, and some will come back. As a group, as of today, it no longer exists and will never be together again.

That's baseball.

Eight months ago, in Tempe Arizona, in the warm sun of late February, more than 100 men and boys came together in their odd three-quarter length pants. Scioscia's immediate task was to fashion a team of 25 of them that would stay together through the next eight months as a team and win. There were questions. There was not enough pitching.The remarkable first baseman from last year was gone. The wondrous right fielder with the improbable Russian and Latino name of Vladamir Guerrero, now older and more than a step slower still wanted to play everyday. The gentlemanly left fielder, Garret Anderson, the soul of the franchise in the view of many fans was gone, traded in his last years because he too was now more hitter than fielder. This is the way of baseball. The ebb and flow, the kids and the veterans, the greats, the nearly greats, and the never will be either one, who come to the valley every year. It is up to the Scioscia and the coaches on this team as it is on all the teams there and in Florida to sift through them and decide who stays an who goes and who plays and who sits. A team's complex mixture of chemistry, mental toughness.,and physical ability is an erector set that must be constructed in these busy early days of spring in the desert. It is done in the talented minds of the coaches, instructors, scouts, and ultimately the manager.

When they came away in late March, there were still troubling issues for Scioscia and his staff. There were questions that could only now be answered during the season in the sometimes grim grind of the 164 game schedule in six months before them. The pundits said that the Texas Rangers were good enough to beat this team and win the Division this year. The sardonic Scioscia, as highly respected a manager as there is in the league, gave the stock answer, "We'll see. That's why we play the games."

The bad things came early. Injury plagued the regulars, Scioscia struggled to find others to fill the holes and give them a chance to keep winning while the others healed. He found the answers in odd places. The rookie fist baseman did all he was asked to and more making last years loss of Mark Teixeria (ironically to the Yankees) seem less problematic. Young Erick Aybar became an outstanding shortstop. Pitchers who had been ordinary, became very good. John Lackey took the ball every fifth day and won or kept them in the game. He became the definition of what baseball calls a "stopper," a pitcher who does not let a two game losing streak become three. Then Nick Adenhart was lost to a tragedy so unlikely the team first spiraled and then made him their inspiration for the rest of the year. After his death the team lost a lot until reminded by Scioscia, in an emotional team meeting, that Nick would have expecteded more of them. They apparently agreed and won 23 of their next 30 games and kept going, with Nick's jersey with them always, even doused with champagne when they won the Western Division.Tori Hunter, the young, strong, and remarkable center fielder and team spokesman who had helped Nick acclimate to the major leagues, now made it his personal goal to win the World Series so that Nick's family would have a championship ring.

Yet on this chilled night in New York, eight months and 171 games after they began their quest, they came up short, because they met a team that was better, that had its own inspiration, chemistry, superb pitching, and better hitting to defeat them. There is no shame in that.

They were a special group with a special goal and tried as hard as their talent would allow to reach it. That they failed is not the point. That they tried, and came that close is what should make them proud. They had banished the Boston Red Sox in three straight games to get here. They came within two victories of doing with lesser talent but perhaps greater emotion, what they set out to do when they had gathered those many months before in the Valley of the Sun and were molded into this group that lived, laughed and cried together for the past eight months.

They are gone now. The locker where Nick Adenhart's uniform and baseball cleats resided these last 171 games is gone too. Next year, Mike Scioscia will find a new group waiting for him in Arizona. From them, some from this year, some from trades, some from free agent signings, and others from the minor leagues, he must put the right pieces in the right places once again. It will be a new group, with new talents and new chemistry. He and his staff will mold them, motivate them to overcome the shortcomings of this year and try again to somehow reach that which eluded this year's "special" group by so small a margin.

That's why they play the games.

Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright,
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing, and little children shout;
But there is no joy in Mudville — mighty Casey has struck out.

From"Casey at the Bat"--- by Ernest Thayer, June 3, 1888, The San Francisco Chronicle

2009-10-21T20:00:00.000-07:00

A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT

The days and nights spent in the cathedral of the trees and in proximity to the crashing surf, the song birds and the boxing matches among the voles and squirrels are done on the magnificent coast. It is time to move on to new, different things . There was one more memorable morning of fog that lay on the water allowing the rocks to peek above it into the bright sun above. It is a beautiful sight, spiritual in its way and a good way to remember the serenity I have enjoyed.

When Monday arrived it was time to move inland. In order to do that one goes south back to California and the Northeast up U.S. 199 to Grants Pass through groves of Redwoods in the Jedediah Smith National Forest. It was a lovely day once one left the overcast of the coast. As the road winds upward, the weather cools even in the brightening sun. Fall colors are everywhere. The leaves are red and yellow and the rivers one crosses are teeming with salmon . It is time for the fall spawning run. It is an amazing sight. The crystal clear deep pools hold the fish until they are ready to go up the next rapids. One supposes they rest.

After lunch at the side of the road in a park placed here for contemplation of these sights, the ever valiant La Coachasita takes us into Grants Pass and we are suddenly confronted with strip malls, civilization, cars, and people, far more cars than I have seen in awhile. While the life on the coast has hardly been monkish, everyone here seems to be in a hurry. For nearly two weeks, there hasn't been anything to hurry about and now I hurry just to get out of their way.

Once at Grants Pass, it is a short ride down the highway to the Valley of the Rogue State Park. It is a delightful open park like place with fall color all about and plentiful wildlife. The Rouge River runs through it. The Coho Salmon climb the rapids near the campsite and one could probably stand there all day and watch them. I am puzzled by the absence of predators, yet realize the houses nearby and the proximity to the Interstate probably make other areas more desirable, There is a grazing area that draws deer in the evening just before dusk.

My lack of plans are often as much an enemy as a friend especially in area I have covered often before. It leads to thoughts of the trip south and which way to go. I spend the first morning pouring over maps and campsite information looking for a new way, give up after I get an idea where I will be through the weekend, and decide it is too nice a day to spend doing this and go out. My nearest neighbors are nearly always walking. They are accompanied by three dachshunds, all related, the youngest of which is 12. The dogs seem to have parade training as they always seem to be walking in step. They all live just north of Yosemite now that they are retired and are pleasant companions who point out they best vantage points along the river and the best places to see the deer that come down to feed.

This is a different world and I will be here but a while and then back to the Redwood Coast for a few days before going east again and then south. The weather will stay clear if cooler until then.

That's fine. It will give my rain suit time to dry out.

2009-10-17T15:33:00.000-07:00

THE MAGNIFICENT ANDERSONS

A few here in the camp have dawdled on the Oregon Coast now for over a week. I will soon head inland to see some of nature's other wonders, some friends, and think seriously about going south.

The storm left us with two days, while quite different, equally nice. The first was a calm day with no wind yet fog the crept in and out tantalizing us all day. It would be impossible to see for ten minutes and then lift to allow the shore to be recognized. It was, in its way, quite lovely. The soft fog, warm temperatures and the surreal landscape of trees that live in a permenant leaning state due to the usual omnipresent wind all give the impression that this is a different earth. The second day was as clear as the previous was not and as the sun rose high. It reached the mid 70 degree mark. It was a wonderful day to walk and visit and just sit and contemplate the birds and the sea.

The following morning it rained hard again and of course it was a day when things needed doing. By noon I was soaked but done and back inside. It was dry three hours later, the park was quiet and the temperature pleasant enough for a fire outside and a glass of wine with the neighbors before dark.

To keep me on my toes, and in keeping with the theme of the trip apparently, minor catastrophe struck the day after the storm when my air mattress decided it had seen all it needed of this world and sagged with a quiet sigh of fatigue. I woke and was certain I was sleeping in a hammock. The getting out was far more difficult than the sleeping which was pleasant enough. By the time I struggled free, I was laughing out loud. This says somethng for the level of serenity I have been able to achieve. A string of oaths would usually accompany such a thing in my "other" world.

Once many trips ago, while making the bed, I slashed a mattress on a sharp edge and had to find another. Since then, I have always carried a spare realizing it was one redundancy that was crucial to life in the van. After rummaging around in the deep hold in the rear, I found the spare, replaced the bed and decided since I now that I had all this laundry I might as well do some of it. There is a laundry here that is as nice as any I have ever seen in a public park. It is franchised to a local sheltered workshop which keeps it clean and well stocked with coins and detergent. By five, I was reading while awaiting for the interminable dry cycle (an hour) to finish .

Two couples arrived at about the same time. As happens with these chance meetings, the one man had grown up 10 miles from me in the East. He spent life after the service as an elevator mechanic in Los Angeles and other places in California. They now live in the Sacremento valley. His wife, a self-described "traditional housewife" is a most kind a gentle person. Their dog "Maggie" is a Golden Retreiver of 12 that came to them last Thanksgiving is equally so. It is their third such senior dog that they have taken after the original owner has died. The two before have lived an average of 3 years and both of them are quite pholosophical about the fact that the dogs do not stay with them long. They are clearly attached to her and will no doubt treat her very well, yet seem to understand they are only caretakers for the animals of others who will have a few happy years with them and then will be gone. They see it as better than the alternative.

We were joined nearly simultaneously by a couple from British Columbia. They were headed home . We were disabused of the idea that they were snow birds headed south when the man, Trevor, explained that "at their age" they were only allowed to travel 30 days out of country or their insurance would be canceled. Their age seemed in the 60's so both my other new friends and I asked when that became the rule. Martha explained that since she was 80 the rules were different.

Well. All of us could have been knocked down with one feather. Trevor explained that he had married an "older women" to which Martha replied was his fault and he would always be trying to catch up with her. Laughing, he admitted it as true as he was "only" 78 soon to be 79. I am certain that I have never seen two people of that age in such wonderrful physical shape or good humor. We had learned all this soon after Trevor had jogged to and from their site to find sufficient US currency to feed the washing machines. I have relatives who do not run that well at less than half the age.

As with most Vancouver people, I found them polite, curious and wonderful story tellers. When asked if the city was ready for the Winter Olympics, they told of their son who has been a volunteer for the effort for nearly three years and would return from Florida for the first time in years to finish the job in January and February. Trevor said that the Candian government had somehow reached the conclusion that there were too few volunteers so were offering all government employees in the Province the "opportunity" to volunteer by giving them six weeks off with pay. He was appalled. They seemed to have many volunteers already and now many would just take the time off with the pay. He had decided that if one could be away from their job for that long n they should be declared "redundant" and the job abolished.

Trevor was not happy with his government before this. Yet, as with most Canadienans I have met their disgruntlement is more philosophical than angry a difference between they and many citizens here. He had been in the English Navy for 10 years and then the Canadiaen Navy for ten more. All the service was creditabe, but those who served prior to the unification of all the Armed Forces in Canada, apparently were not eligible for pension if their service was so split. The fact that he spent all those years in deisel submarines, served in two wars (I assume War II was his first), a most dangerous of professions, mattered not at all to them. It did to me, spending about ten minutes below deck in one of those things back when I was a young Ensign was enough for me. I cannot imagine how he did it.

Martha asked about our health care "problem." We all mumbled something that contained the word "maybe." Ken, the New Jersey born and raised owner of Maggie artfully turned that aside by asking what would happen if they became ill while here. Martha then recounted a trip they made here some years ago when she had been hospitalized three times for influenza. The hospitals and relevant caregivers all billed the Canadian government, Trevor's union insurance and some other policy they retain by virtue of living this long equally and were fully reimbursed by all since none talk to each other. Ken and I found it an interesting concept to remember for future reference since Trevor delighted in telling us that the Canadian government enjoys doing the same when a U.S. citizen gets sick up there.

Too soon, darkness was falling fast as the cold fog was inbound and we all had dinners to eat so we parted. Trevor and Martha left the next morning, another set of wonderful people I can put in my pantheon of the many met on the road.

2009-10-12T17:35:00.000-07:00

HOW MANY CUBITS WAS THAT AGAIN?

We remain at Brookings Oregon, deciding it is a good place to ride out the storm coming this evening. Many of the neighbors have done the same. They are a happy and by now familiar buuch so if bad things happen, we all feel we we will be among friends. This morning we all scrambled out for the purposes of finding groceries, gasoline in case we need the generators, covered bycycles, and eliminated our used water, and tied things down.
The weather forecast is not vague. It willl rain by evening after dark and bcome heavy by midnight and totals will be between two and four inches. Winds at the coast will be 20 to 25 gusting to 40 kts with 50 kts in the passes above. The wind warnuings are posted for 3 AM through 2 PM tomorrow. The rain will continiue all day tomorrow and tomorrow night becoming showers on Wedsnesday and then lesser showers on Wednesday.

At present, it is overcast and until about 4 o'clock the wind was calm. It was altogether a very nice day, if overcast and the high 60's is something you can enjoy and I can. As darkness falls, the air is again calm and now is 50. There is a quiet that falls at this time everynight, but only the hardiest of souls are lighting any fires. Most have tied down what we can and are now contemplating the places that will flood and the possible leaks that could occur.

I have been through one other storm on this coast, yet have not experienced the wind in full throat as it will be later tonight and tomorrow. If the gust get as high as expected, how much rocking will depend on the oreintation of the van. I am not wholly sure of that at the moment, but if it remains dry in here I am sure it can't be as bad as being at sea.

La Coachasita is wearing here winter "curtains" over here single pane windows in the rear and closed up as tight as possible. We await the storm, which, if it runs as it is supposed to, should be gone by Thursday morning. The wind will move it quickly if it indeed comes as they predict.

She also awaits a further examination of her electrical system on Wednesday as that issue continues to plague her.

Two bycycling campers, common in this area, came in an hour ago. I admire their tenacity. I believe I would have sought a motel room tonight were I contemplatating a night like this under canvas. They appear seasoned and at least fiegned unconcern when ask. I am sure they know a great deal about this. I trust I will not see them leaving in the morning.

An Ark would be useful about now. We will have to do without.

2009-10-09T20:34:00.000-07:00

TRANQUILITY BASE

This is the place I will spend the next four nights or until it starts to rain. I arrived at Harris State Beach last night near dark thanks to some further discomfort of La Coachasita. She is having a rough trip. She is reasonably well now, still a lingering ignition issue which Lyle did not fully appreciate. His fix lasted two days and now there are new symptoms. I believe he was right in his fix, but that the problem is more severe. Until Tuesday, however, I am more worried about whether my bike tire will hold air and whether I will see the sunset.

Brookings, Oregon was the warm place in the state today, reaching 81 degrees. There is a strange wind that effects this place, much like the easterly flows from the mountains in California and it was blowing today and thus the temperature. It is part of the "Banana Belt" of Oregon because of its odd coastal location but lack of rainfall and tendency to be warmer than the rest of the state.

My favorite park in the state is named after an early Dutch settler, the literature tells me, but little more. It is in woods yet high on a bluff overlooking the surf and wonderful rocks of the coast. Orca whales are here, and while sightings are more common after rains, small pods occasionally appear near shore..

The Oregonians seem to have a sixth sense of when the weather will be good. After September 15th this is a first come, first served park. Some came on Wednesday to be first. I was so late last night I took what was left and hoped someone would pull out this morning. A few did and I was lucky enough to get a new spot I know gets full sun through from mid-morning through the afternoon. It is a quiet and peaceful place despite the full house crowd. The sites are large in the area I am in and well screened with wonderful shrubs. and tall conifers.

The forecast here is for good weather until late Monday when two days of some sort of rain will decide for me whether I leave to climb over the hill toward Medford, which will have less precipitation or simply wait until the later part of the week while doing some sight seeing and perhaps trying to find additional help for my companion. Brookings is big enough to have a "Lyle type" in it and it may well be worth the trouble. I can say this has been an eventful trip so far, not all pleasant one's but all the people I have met have been pleasant and there have been a few characters worth remembering.

My next door neighbors are from near Redding California and have been here two weeks. One of those weeks has been devoted to treating a sick dog who, according to the woman whose name I have yet to learn, "got a bad bone" from a lady at a gas station somewhere north of here and has been to the veterinary to treat an intestinal problem as a result. It is a wee thing of undistinguished breed. Whatever its's disability, it still knows how to bark now and then. It has a companion, slightly larger ,which seems to see it as her duty to shut the other one up. Tom, the male member of this fifth wheel tribe is a large quiet and kind man who showed up at my door about eight last night with left over pizza that he claimed he was incapable of eating. This park is like that. I have never met an unkind person here and it has a sense of community which, while not oppressive, can be helpful. I tossed my trash out front this morning to take it to the dumpster once the sun was full up and it was time to see the beach. A man I have never met walked by, picked it up and took it with his own. It is that sort of place.

So we are settled for the weekend.A bike trip to town for a a Sunday paper and some milk may happen on Sunday, otherwise I intend to finish reading a book, listen to ball games and perhaps indulge in a nap.

So, Houston, as it was once famously said, Tranquility Base, here, The Eagle has landed.

2009-10-05T20:04:00.000-07:00

LYLE MEETS STUPID AND HIS VAN

The van still rules. You can believe all you want that you plan these trips and that you are the one in charge, but if the van is limping, it is in charge, and attention must be paid.

My departing post mentioned that the ignition was acting up on start. It seemed to believe that it was being asked to start by "remote." which was and add-on installed several years ago to allow one to start the van from outside the vehicle. People who live in very cold places and members of families of a certain ethnicity who live in New Jersey know all about these starters. Few Southern Californians know of them and less about installing them.

I needed this option for a variety of reasons none of which are important enough to repeat here. As I arrived in Morro Bay, it seemed to be getting worse and whether it was doing real damage was a question I couldn't answer.

The proprietor of the RV Park was as usual a font of knowledge and he understood the problem at least as well as I did. He suggested I go see "Pete." Pete ran a repair garage in the center of town which seem fixes everything that run on liquid fuel and is a mode of transportation. When I arrived I met "Lyle," as Pete was busy assuring a customer that no, the key to his trunk would not start his car and that was why it was now stuck in his ignition and he would certainly take care of it.

Lyle, a man of about 20 or 22 years of age approached and I started my by now well rehearsed story about how when I turned the key to start the van in the normal way, it appeared to be starting remotely, as in the lights would blink and the ignition buzzer would go off. If I was fortunate enough to get it running, the lights would continue to blink unless I touched the remote start control start button three times, then it would run normally. It had begun the day before I left, but only on the first start of the day. By the time I had left the campsite that morning, it was doing it anytime the van was turned off.

I, who freely admit that what I know about electricity can be put in my pocket and still have room for my wallet, was sure that the best I could hope for was a "mechanic's shrug" from anyone other than an installer of such devices, but was sure that any mechanic could at least disable it so that no damage would be done and it would no longer make me crazy every time I started the van.

Now I had this young man standing in front of me who nodded his head, asked for my keys, tried to start the van and quickly stopped. he then asked for the remote control, examined it, and pushed one of the three buttons, restarted the van, looked at the dashboard for a moment, turned it off an declared it fixed.

Well. Since I was playing the part of Stupid, I replied, "Huh?"

"Fixed," Lyle said.

"How?"I replied.

"By pushing this little button, this grey one here, next to the yellow start button, which has an unlock symbol on it, I unlocked the remote."

"It was locked?" Stupid asked, mystified.

"Yes," Lyle said casually, "see, it has a button to lock it and unlock it and then one to start it. You lock it so that another radio frequency doesn't start the van and it also acts as an alarm so that the lights blink. They will blink again if you disable it as you did a few minutes later."

"Oh," Stupid said, "How come when they sold it to me no one bothered to tell me that? In fact the previous control, which had to be replaced, had the same buttons. When they gave me that one they told me it was a universal control and I could ignore them since they would only work with an alarm."

"Dunno. But they were wrong."

"Why, after two years, did it 'lock'?"

"Somebody pushed the lock button. Maybe you did when you put it in your pocket. Hard to tell."

"Yes, hard to know," Stupid admitted.

Lyle shrugged, smiled, asked if there was anything else, I laughed, he laughed, Pete--who had now joined us--added to the merriment, said I didn't owe him anything for three minutes work and then actually thanked me for stopping in and gave me a cup of coffee.

Lyle went back to tasks which I certainly hoped taxed his brain more than my alleged problem. Stupid got in his van and continued north on U.S.101 still shaking his head.

I wish there were a moral to this story. There isn't. Lyle is a wise young man. I wish-- no hope--there are more like Lyle out there. We will need them all.

2009-10-04T16:24:00.000-07:00

THE ROAD CALLED AGAIN

I have decamped. The phrase was more common in the 1880's and in England than here, but I have nonetheless.

Carlsbad is in the rear view mirror once again. The trip began before dawn since it involved driving the Los Angeles Freeways which are known to us that live south if it as the Combat Zone. Getting beyond LA to the north requires one to use their freeways and it is best to pick the day and time one wants to do so before setting out so you can have a reasonable expectation that you will be able to get through and out at the northern end of the San Fernando Valley in under five hours.

La Coachasita and I have found the any north bound travel is best started before dawn. Sunday is a good day to leave as LA people like all others are likely to get a late start that day. This weeks added attraction was the fog and 20 degree drop in temperature and and occasional drizzle as we passed through. Nothing keeps people off the LA Freeways more than a chill wind and a chilly morning. We were in Santa Barbara in three plus hours for which I was grateful , if sleep deprived.

Wind was a factor all day which is annoying when you are driving what amounts to a box faster than you wish. However, we were able to leave the main road and make several stops along the road and still reach Morro Bay by early afternoon. The wind on the beach was strong, but I had lunch there and it was in the 60's so not uncomfortable. It is , as they say "fresher" now and I will be rocked to sleep tonight. The clouds and rain had been left behind and the sun is bright and welcome. The locals are complaining that it is too cold. So far, I have found it quite refreshing. Unlike the spring trip certainly and the forecast for the northern coast is fair and perhaps a bit warmer for the rest the week.

This trip will last about a month. The driving, unlike the marathon of the spring, will be much less. Southern Oregon is the farthest I will go. The Coast will be first and then inland to visit the banks of the Rogue River, Asland, Medford, and then back south to the Redwoods National Forest. That is the plan, as you know, I am not good a keeping with plans, but one overriding desire does exist. I wan to go into the woods and sit and think and enjoy the quiet. The television seems not to work as it relies on one of those conversion boxes that no one here has had much luck with including myself. The Public Radio system in Oregon is good and the satellite radio works so long as it is not blocked by the giant trees or the cliffs along El Camino Real which will be the main route. This is the route of the famous Franciscan Missions, some, now nearly 300 years later, still operating after the Franciscan Friars led by Junipero Sierra blazed the trail to convert the "savages" to Catholicism. Others are ruins. All are interesting. We have been this way before and seen many of them on this, the first route north in California long before it was in the control of the United States. It is also now as U.S.101 and on my return I will travel through the area of California known as the "Lost Coast" since there is no road that runs along the ocean as Route 1, The Pacific Coast Highway does south of Legget. It is an odd, and in some ways an enchanted place of dirt farm roads and great trees as well as farms that run all the way to the surf. Grazing cows are sometimes seen wading in the surf there in warm weather.

So I and my faithful companion are once again off on a grand adventure. All our adventures are grand just in the fact that we manage them and get home. This will be the last of the year with only local trips hereafter. The van has a slight wound now, a glitch in the ignition system that makes the front battery drain in the night. There is a remote starter involved and it seems to be interfering with the normal starting process. It can be overcome, but I would like it to be fixed and as it happens there is a place here in Morro Bay that can look at it in the morning. If they can and it takes some time, I will still be south of San Francisco tomorrow night. That is why itineraries are rather useless. I would like to have it done, just to know something worse is not happening. It is not rocket science. Anyone with an elementary knowledge of electricity and the 12 volt system--I am not in that group--can make it stop, if not wholly repair it. I can live with either for now.

So it will be onward and northward for the next week and a slow pace, a pace this trip seems to need.

If you come along, I will try not to bore you. The places and people of interest are out there as always. I will try to find them and tell you of them.

2009-09-29T15:44:00.000-07:00

A RING FOR THE ADENHARTS

The Los Angeles Angels at Anahiem defeated the Texas Ranger last night in Anahiem. They are now the Western Division Champions.

Somewhere in Maryland, Jim Adenhart was smiling

As with all the alpha male celebratory nonsense that goes along with such victories, they all piled on each other on the field before they headed for the clubhouse and the obligatory loud music, champagne spraying, beer drinking, dancing by themselves and yelling at the top of their lungs.

When they got there, there were two things waiting. The manager, Mike Scioscia, and a jersey that had been in the dugout for every home game this year. Before any corks popped or cans were opened, they bowed their heads.

Before revelry came remembrance.

Kevin Jepsen is a young pitcher on this now this Championship Team. He is a rookie. Rookies are given jobs to do. This year, his was to take the the jersey with # 34 and ADENHART on the back out of the locker next to him and hang it in the dugout before every game. For Jepsen, this was no chore.

Scioscia reminded everyone what Nick had meant to them all and how he would be with them as long as they could make this season last. They owed him their best just as they owed it to each other. He was there all year, that is what teammates do for each other.

The corks popped, the silliness began as it always will in such moments in this game. When that was done, the team jogged en masse to the center field wall where Nick Adenhart's picture remains in mid-pitching motion. Some tapped his the face for luck, some bowed their heads, someone poured beer over the head of their teammate.

They spoke to reporters of what he meant to them this year, how they came out of their grief two months after his death playing badly at 29-29, and on June 11 and lost a particularly ugly game to the Tampa Bay Rays 11-1, the Manager closed the clubhouse and, among other things, ask them if this was how they wanted Nick to remember them? They were better than that.

Since then, the are 63-35.

Tori Hunter, the team's talented and loquacious centerfielder said of the young man he had befriended in spring training, " He should be here celebrating with us...now we are celebrating his name. We're playing hard for him. Trust me. He is here in spirit and in love."

And,
"We 're going to try to bring a ring back for him and give it to his parents. This is the first step."

Mike Butcher, the laconic pitching coach who has talked to the family once a week all summer said he was never the type to use a loss such as Nick's as motivation, but he thought the players did.

"You never know how people grieve," he told a reporter. "but there was someone there for everyone of our guys every day, and that's what you expect of a teammate." As he looked at the larger than life picture of Nick Adenhart, Butcher went on, " That's bigger than baseball."

In a week or so, the Angels will continue their season. They will most likely play the Boston Red Sox in a series that will determine if they get to play for the American League Championship.

Nick would be proud of them.

2009-09-16T18:07:00.000-07:00

Whither Reamus?

No one has asked, but a short post here will bring you up to date. I have been enjoying being home and finally getting my book edited, reviewed, and now after someone else proofreads it, it will be off to the publisher. There will be more about it here when it finally gets done.

I spend my days finishing that, catching up with some construction projects that needed doing, fighting a rear guard action with the IRS over what is a minor problem but seems to have reached Biblical proportions as we shove various pieces of paper back and forth and can’t agree as to who has the correct arithmetic.

There is a fall trip planned to the Oregon Coast if everything falls together soon. I hope to leave in late September or early October. They actually have some lovely weather there then most years, although after this last trip, I plan to take lots of water repellant clothes.

La Coachasita has spent most of her summer in hospital having various things diagnosed. Nothing serious as it turns out. She was home with me for two weeks but is back now to have a fitting replaced on one of the air ride bags in the rear which developed a slow leak. The fear of steering pump repairs and transmission failures have been allayed and she is wearing her nearly 105,000 miles well. A waxing and a good cleaning inside makes her look like a new van.

As the masthead on the blog here says, this is mostly about the places I go, things I see, and the people I meet, so the words in between are often scarce. When I get back out there amongst them, I will no doubt find new things to tell about and describe.

I hope all of you have had a wonderful summer and a cooler one than we have. This is supposed to be paradise and if it is, it was a very hot one this year, I have recovered now, but life without air conditioning became a challenge for a month or so. Somehow, north of here in the only big fire to date, they managed to burn more square miles than are covered by the City of Chicago. It was mostly in the Los Padres National Forest and it burns still. It is not fully contained some six weeks after it started. When the rains this winter, it will not be a fun time for anyone up there i the hills.

Stay well, do good works, be nice to one another, and you will hear from me from the road in a month or so.

2009-08-18T17:52:00.000-07:00

A Search for Peace

The California Angels played a three game series with the Baltimore Orioles at Camden Yards in Baltimore this past week. While the Orioles are an unremarkable team this year, in last place in the American League Eastern Division, the Angels continue to rise from the ashes of the early summer and remain in front of the Texas Rangers in the race for a Division Championship.

What made the series more memorable than the Angels winning it was a visitor to the clubhouse, Jim Adenhart.

There are stories that make headlines and then are gone as are the people about whom they are told. They affect for the moment. Others have reminders and affect a group of people for a long time. The story of Nick and Jim Adenhart is one of those.

Some may remember the story of Nick Adenhart, chronicled in many places as well as here: http://amusingreamus.blogspot.com/2009/04/prayer-for-jim-adenhart.html#comments. Jim’s son Nick was in an automobile accident with two friends several hours after pitching his first win of the season in April, the second of his young, major league life, and likely cementing a place in the starting rotation for the only organization for which he ever played. Before morning he was dead. So were two of his close friends. A third, a promising young college catcher, was so badly injured he will never play the game he loves so much again.

This weekend, Jim spent an hour or more with the Angel players and coaches. He continues to heal after four months after the loss of his son. Jim still lives in Hagerstown where Nick grew up in Maryland and while he still grieves for his son in his own private way, he saw the same in the team this week. It is the first time since the spring that he has seen them and the first time he has talked extensively about Nick and how he has coped with his loss.

Baseball is business. A place where players are bought and sold for the only purpose the teams exist: Winning. Yet somehow this is different. It is the death of a son, a co-worker, a friend. The Angel players and front office people, too still grieve for Nick. His picture, name, and number are on the outfield fence in Angel Stadium. It is common for players on the way to the bullpen to pat it for luck, or for an outfielder to write his name in the dirt of the warning track in front of it before taking up his position before the game begins. Nick’s locker is as he left it that night in April in the home clubhouse

The Adenharts were by no means a nuclear family. Jim and Nick’s mother Janet are divorced and Nick was Jim’s reason to exist for the past few years. He was invited to the game by Mike Scioscia, the Angel manager and the coaches and players who have kept in touch with him through these four months of what Jim readily admits have been torment. Jim copes with that by going to bereavement counseling and in the four months since it happened reading several books about the grieving process. He says that now and then he feels he has a handle on it but then something comes back from nowhere and sets him back again. This month it is the dreams that started a month ago and always it is the heartache that does not want to leave him. Jim knows there is no blueprint on how to deal with this. He is making his own way, but he is pleased by how much the Angel personnel have made it easier for him. He admits that when he walked into the clubhouse on Sunday he was taken aback to see his son’s locker and uniform shirt at first yet it helped Jim said, when he learned that the equipment managers still designate one in every visitors clubhouse as well. A road uniform, with Nick’s name and the number 34 on it, hangs in it as if awaiting his return. He appreciates how much it means to have the support of the players that knew him and the coaches who made it possible for Nick to dream and then succeed. He believes in the end, it is good that they are keeping his memory alive.

In those horrible hours after “the call” came to his hotel, two men stayed with Jim until he was ready to go home. Jim Butcher, the Angel’s pitching coach and Tim Mead, the vice president of communications are still in touch with him on a weekly basis. They have been super, Jim says, especially since he knows how much they have to think about besides him. They were in the waiting room when the surgeons gave him the news. They were there for support. They were there at the beginning and they still are.

After Nick’s death, the team suffered a series of injuries that left them reeling. The players say Nick’s loss was as hard to recover from as the injuries. They surged in July and August. As they did, Jim found it possible to become a fan again. He says it was hard at first, but he found himself checking the sports section, and then watching games, and now his interest in the team that took the gamble and gave his sore armed son the chance to succeed is rekindled. Jim Adenhart is an Angel fan forever.

Jim tries hard not to relive the past. On Nov 9th the trial of Andrew Thomas Gallo will begin in Orange County California. Jim has no intention of attending. He says he tries to harbor no resentment toward the man now charged with three counts of second degree murder and other charges which could send him to jail for as long as 50 years. Jim believes it was fate and that if it hadn’t been Nick, it would have been someone else. He has no reason to want to relive something he is trying so hard to forget.

Ironically, two weeks after he came home and buried his son, Jim had reason to remember. While driving through an intersection in Hagerstown, his car was hit, as Nick’s had been, by a pickup truck. He was two blocks from home. He suffered minor injuries. He says that something or someone told him to take evasive action, to hit the accelerator so he didn’t take the full brunt of the crash. Jim believes that and that belief helps keep him going.

In his eulogy, Jim said the happiest day of his life was the day Nick was born. To commemorate it, Nick’s home town of Hagerstown will name a Little League field after him this year. Jim says he is sure there will be as many blue crabs—Nick’s favorite food—consumed as there will be fond memories of his son.

Some men live 80 years and never touch as many people as Nick did in his brief life. For Jim right now that is both a blessing and a curse but it is how it is and he is learning to live with that.

On August 24, 2009, Nick Adenhart would have been 23 years old.

Ed note: The background for this piece was taken from the LA TIMES story of August 17, 2009, by Mike DiGiovanna. It is used by permission.

2009-08-01T20:32:00.000-07:00

SHIKATAGANAI

Japanese, idiomatic, translated as:

“It can’t be helped” or alternatively, “nothing can be done.” In the common speech of modern Japanese, it is the equivalent of “It is how it is.”

The word is an echo of times past, a word that described the feelings of many after December 7, 1941. It was enunciated by the Nisei and the Isei people of the West Coast of the United States in their language. Yet it also described the feelings of their neighbors of all ethnicities.

The country was in one afternoon clearly, irrevocably, and violently at war with Japan. There was confusion, panic, a sense of moral outrage that another nation could do this to us, and yet there it was. It had happened. We had to fight back in everyway we knew how.

Shikataganai…

When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor that lazy Sunday morning, some of the fighter aircraft knew they might not be able to return to their carriers. They had been instructed to proceed to a small uninhabited island and wait for a submarine to pick them up. The island was Niihau, and what happened thereafter is known as the Niihau Incident. As told after the war, only two damaged Zero fighters ran low on fuel after being damaged in an engagement with the few American aircraft that managed to get airborne. The pilots went to Niihau. When they circled the island they learned of the first failure of Japanese intelligence. The island was quite inhabited. One of the pilots radioed that he would not land but would return to Pearl, find a suitable target into which he would crash his plane. Yet a minute later, he inexplicably flew nose down into the ocean. Airman 1st Class Shigenori Nishikaichi, decided that he would land and reach the submarine he believed was there waiting for him.

As he passed over the island again, he found it was better prepared for war than Oahu had been since the level areas in the pastures and other places that looked suitable for a landing were purposely strewn with boulders and other debris. He finally found a small flat area near a house and crashed his plane there.

The islanders, who at this point knew nothing of the Pear Harbor attack, were amazed to see this sleek plane with the red bullseye painted on it’s side as it passed over the island. Niihau was one of many kapu, or forbidden islands in the chain. They were private, owned usually, as was the case here, by an absentee landlord to which they had been given by a previous Hawaiian Monarch. The man who lived nearest pulled the pilot from the wreck and in schoolboy English, Nishikaichi, asked if he was Japanese since to him he appeared to be. He was not although there was several ethnic Japanese living on Niihau. Remarkably the man took him to his house and his wife made him breakfast. Nishikaichi thought that a landing party would be there for him soon from the submarine, so gave little thought to what he said, or did. The villagers even gave him a luau.

Shikataganai…

The rest of his stay there is a confusing one. He told his story to one of the Japanese residents and his wife, who for reasons of their own did not tell the other islanders all of what he had said. The landlord, restricted from travelling to the island by the military was eventually brought to the island when the residents went to get him after learning that Pearl Harbor had been bombed and they had in their midst one of those who had done it. The submarine had been in the area but had long ago been ordered to Oahu to sink any American relief ships that might try to enter Pearl Harbor. Airman 1st Class Shigenori Nishikaichi would not be saved. He died in a colossal confusion, one version of which can be found at http://www.historynet.com/the niihau-incident.htm. There is a monument in his hometown in Japan which is inscribed with what are said to be a version of the events and he is described as having “died in battle.”

The importance of the affair is disputed. What makes it noteworthy at all is that it is thought by some that a naval intelligence report forwarded to the Pentagon regarding the incident stating that the “likelihood that Japanese residents previously believed loyal to the United States may aid Japan” was one of the driving forces behind the decision to establish Military Areas in the United States. The imprisonment of more than 200,000 Japanese Americans from the West Coast for the duration of the war followed.

Shikataganai…

Strange things happened in this time of confusion and panic. Choices were made. Ralph Lazo went with his Nisei friends when they signed up to be taken to the internment camp. They were his schoolmates. They were members of the same social club that had a baseball team that they all played on and if they were leaving, he was going with them. Ralph was of Irish American and Mexican heritage, but the authorities just assumed, in those chaotic days, that he was another of “them.” he was sent to Manzanar in the Owens Valley of California. His friends were sent to a camp at Heart Mountain Wyoming. Undaunted, Ralph became the star pitcher for the high school team in the camp, the “Manzaknights” and was on of the graduates of the Manzanar High School, which existed long enough to graduate a class in 1942,’43 and ‘44.

Shikataganai…

The interment policy was the choice of the military to control the “yellow peril,” and possible enemies amongst us. Americans were frightened, confused, and panicked. The “Japs” had to be contained or bombs would soon fall on Los Angeles. Indeed, there is a man I know now who lived through those times on the West Coast who still believes it was right. “It couldn’t be helped,” he says to me now, “nothing else could have been done.”

Shikataganai…

For the Nisei, Japanese who were citizens, it was the worst of times. For the Isei, who were Japanese aliens living here but not citizens it was worse. Initially they were all taken from their homes and businesses and placed at racetracks and stadiums to wait. They were encouraged to move east at first, to just leave. Some did and spent the war in the Midwest or East in relative peace. Most could not because their money and homes had been seized. When the government realized that most had no place to go they needed a plan. President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 which established Military Areas in the United States and the removal of any person who might threaten the war effort and permitted the internment camps--called by even President Roosevelt “concentration camps”--to be established and they were shipped there, each with a tag affixed to their clothing with the number of their family. By November 1942 the “relocation” was complete. A loyalty oath was asked of all internees and one question asked if they swore allegiance to the United States and only the United States. The Isei were torn, if the said yes, they denied their Japanese citizenship, if they said no they were considered traitors. Most said no. They were sent to a camp at Tule Lake California which had a higher degree of security, a worse climate, and worse living conditions.

The Japanese found varying degrees of comfort at each camp. At Manzanar, they found barracks that had been hastily built by a cadre of Japanese “volunteers” who preceded them there made of wood and tarpaper that leaked wind, rain, cold air, and an arid climate which was alien to them. On the first night there, they were given a sack and told to fill it with straw for their bed. Some of the younger ones protested the treatment, but the elders counseled patience. Shikataganai, they said, it can’t be helped, and there is nothing to be done. In the hierarchical society they were used to, this carried great weight and most accepted that this was how it would be. They settled into life in the camp. They started a newspaper, baseball teams, built gardens in the arid land, sacrificing their own water supplies to water them. They built a cemetery, furniture from scrapes of packing crates and ate in dining halls. There were 10,000 of them on 500 acres with no privacy, sharing rooms, and showers without regard to sex. They did not thrive. They endured the worst conditions of their lives. By September of 1942, 10,000 Japanese were living in 504 barracks in 36 “blocks” at Manzanar. Each block had 14 barracks of four rooms each. Any combination of four people occupied one room of 20x25 feet. A lamp, oil stove, four cots, and blankets were the only furnishing provided. They made the rest.

Shikataganai…

By 1943, some of the younger men and women from the camps were permitted to join others who had been in the Army when the war broke out. Many of the men were sent to Europe to fight the Germans in the Italian campaign. They fought bravely in a segregated unit, the now famous 442nd Regimental Combat Team, as part of the 100th Infantry Battalion which was made up of the Hawaiian Territorial Guard. They were known as the “Purple Heart” regiment for the number of wounds and casualties as well as the medals awarded. Thus, there was the incongruous sight of a blue or gold star hanging on the barracks of a family living behind barbed wire surrounded by guard towers who had either a son or daughter in the military, or one who had died for his country.

One received the Medal of Honor, the highest Military decoration America can bestow on a member if the military. It is, by criteria, given only for an act that a rational person would not find acceptable as a lawful direct order from a superior, yet saves the lives of others. Pfc. Sadao S. Munemori, whose mother and siblings were suffering the cold, heat, and indifference of their fellow citizens inside the barbed wire at Manzanar, performed such an act. He purposely jumped on a live grenade and was credited with saving his entire Platoon.

Shikataganai…

In 1944, the court challenge to their detention, brought on behalf of the internees, had made its way to the United States Supreme Court. The Court held, in a decision as convoluted as any they had handed down up to that time, that the government had the Constitutional authority to evacuate citizens based solely on national ancestry while separately ruling that loyal citizens cannot be held against their will. The detainees remained in the camps.

The war with Japan ended on August 14, 1945. By November 21st The Manzanar War Relocation Center was closed. They were free to go, where was now the only question. The government provided transportation for most by train and bus back to their former hometowns. When they arrived, many found that there businesses had been seized, as had their homes. They no longer belonged there. In three short years their lives had been altered forever. Nothing could be done they were told… Shikataganai again…yet they started over taking what work they could, becoming the gardeners for California houses, some smaller than they owned before they were internees. They survived and their children flourished and their Government, 43 years later, officially apologized and awarded each if the known 88,000 survivors $20,000 for the inconvenience.

Perhaps it was the policy. Perhaps it was their loyalty, but the irony was simply this: No Japanese American or Japanese alien living in the United States during World War II was ever arrested for, or charged with espionage.

Shikataganai…

The Manzanar War Relocation Center was established as a National Historical Site in 1992, and is maintained by the National Park Service. They are slowly reconstructing certain parts of the camp. The original Auditorium, used for many years as a warehouse to house county vehicles has been restored as an interpretative center. A dining hall and guard tower has been faithfully restored and a barracks is underway with the help of volunteers and donations from the public. This place, so haunting in its desolation will not soon be forgotten here on the wind swept floor of the Owens Valley.

On hot summer evening, or in the cold of the late fall, one can stand here and look at Mount Whitney in the distance and wonder what it would have been like to be here in that chaotic time when these people were feared only because they looked like the enemy. Two thirds of those held here against their will for the duration of the war were American citizens by birth. It is not hard to project those feelings today into this Age of Sacred Terror. Could it happen again? Could an entire ethnicity be questioned as to their loyalty?

Perhaps it could and perhaps not. It surely does not have to be as the elders decided.

Shikataganai…

2009-07-26T17:28:00.000-07:00

Pelicans In Nebraska

The itinerary for my last trip said nothing about Nebraska. Yet somehow I managed to spend six days there.

In the middle of the trip, I spent a weekend at Lake Ogallala Nebraska while I followed the Lincoln Highway and then The Oregon Trail. The campground was pleasant, a state park, one of three in a complex surrounding Lakes McConaughy and Ogallala, lakes all formed by the Kingsley Dam completed in 1941 to collect irrigation water for this part of the state.

Nebraska is a state of two climates. In the east it is humid and warm yet in the far west and north it is dry and seems arid. Dams such as Kingsley were necessary to have the kind of agriculture one sees here. The area to the north and east is dominated by the placid Platte River. I never realized how long or important the river was to the state until this trip. It seems as if it goes on forever and its placid waters, legend has it, were the origin of the name of the state, taken from the language of one of the six Indian tribes that once occupied the land.

Many think of Nebraska as a vanilla, a boring stretch of country to cross on the way to somewhere else. While I had some experience in Omaha where the uber rich Warren Buffet makes his home and the home for every company he has ever bought, the rest of the state, except for the Interstate was mostly a mystery. In my days there, I found it a place full of surprises and a substantial amount of history.

I had entered the state from the east after my stays in Minnesota and Iowa in the hopes of finding dry ground. Most of my spring was spent looking in vain for dry ground. I was following the Lincoln Highway at the time as well as the Oregon and Mormon Trails. I stayed a night at the eastern end of the state in a state campground which was in a city park in Grand Island. One night was enough in this urban oasis which, while pleasant enough, was plagued by bad weather, wind, and an annoying proximity to Interstate 80 which made the sound of trucks a constant companion.

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) forecast was for no more than light rain in the northern part of the state. I decided to detour up there and see the parts I had never seen before, having passed through the southern part as most do the other times I had been there.

There is a scenic byway route designation given to State Route 2 which runs to the north and west across the state. It goes through the “Sandhills” part of the state which is the drier northern area where farming is by irrigation and many of the states more scenic yet less travelled areas are located. The Sand Hills are mostly written as the “sandhills” locally, by the way, while most reference works use the more plausible two word version. The largest place is Loup City on the Middle Loup River with a population about 5,400. It is the County seat of Sherman County and seems a pleasant place with a large courthouse and what seemed to me a small town surrounding it. It seemed odd to learn that only three people within 15 miles self identify as farmers. The majority are in service industries. My stay there was a short but well documented by a number of citizens on the street near the courthouse who seemed to take a curious interest in the funny looking man from California and what he was taking pictures of on a Saturday morning. Taken all together, Loup City, it'a square and lovely park seemed a pleasant if quiet place this Saturday in May.

I had heard of Anselmo before I saw it from a minimart clerk at a gasoline stop in Grand Island. I was warned, “not to miss the church.” What is in Anselmo is the “Cathedral of the Sandhills,” also known as St. Anslem’s Catholic Church, which is most remarkable for its size and architecture as well as its geographic location. It is not what one would expect find on the south side of SR 2 in Nebraska town of under 200 souls. It is impeccably kept and, unfortunately for me, wholly deserted on this day. I waited a bit as I took pictures, hoping someone would come so I could learn the story of it and not have to resort to the Internet. I have since and know little more about it except that the architecture is gothic. The Rectory is a craftsman house with added details to match the church. There is no long convoluted history recorded that I could find that documented how it came to be there or why it was built, although it is generally documented that Anselmo was built by and for the railroad and perhaps at its most populous had 500 residents. Except as first the rail terminus and then a stop on the way to Alliance, it seems to have had no other reason to have been there at all. As I wandered, I found the two other "attractions" of Anselmo. On the Main Street there is a jail built with no nails and a sod house, a “soddy” to the locals, who likely had ancestors that lived in one. There is a small grocery, a bar, post office, and the mandatory grain elevator to round out the “downtown” scene.

The sandhills seem an arid place, but that notion is deceptive. The grass-covered hills are of fine sand like soil that absorbs any moisture like a sponge, supports a varied crop of wild grasses, and gives it back to the people here as clear as crystal water in the shallow lakes and streams such as the Loup River. With only one person every square mile, it is an astronomer’s paradise due to the lack of light pollution. Some would say it is a lonely place, others would find it relaxing. I found it of interest but not a place I would want to put roots. It has a remarkable history not so much agricultural as old west. In the early railroad days it was a tourist area due to the many mineral springs. There is a small, very rustic State Park at Silver Springs along the road to Anselmo, one of the few places left to memorialize the places people came to seek the “restorative powers” of the spas and springs. The Complete Roadside Guide to Nebraska published by the University of Nebraska Press and written by Alan Boyes and Wright Morris is a phenomenal source of information not only about the sandhills but also about many other unique aspects of the state.

The day moved on, I reached Lake Ogallala. It is part of a larger complex formed by the Kingsley Dam and includes Lake McConaughy. It is an enormous place with at least three campgrounds and the dam is considered a marvel of engineering for its placement in such sandy soil. Bald Eagles are there nearly year round now as they have discovered the warm waters from the power plant. Lake Ogallala is the smaller lake in front of the dam and was formed when the gates were closed in 1941 from the area where soil had been removed to shore up the plates of the dam.

If one is lucky as I was, the campsite will face the lake across a flat expanse of grass from the shore. I noticed the usual suspects, the Western Grebe, Mallards, and ducks of all sorts were present.

After setting up and during one of the breaks in the light rain I went to see what the fishermen were catching just beyond the back of my campsite. It was trout mostly and Pelicans were fishing there too but keeping their distance.

It is rare that I am truly surprised by very much along the highway after the 103,000 miles La Coachasita and I have traveled but this was a first. Here were not one but numerous White Pelicans, with a nine-foot wingspan which at maturity weigh over 20 pounds. They are enormous, gregarious birds that move in formation yet unlike the Brown saltwater cousins do not “plunge” dive, but merely dip their extraordinarily large bill for fish while paddling on the surface. They have a lower jaw pouch which is much less discernible in flight than their Brown cousins. They fish in collegial groups, often surrounding fish and have a horn, or bump on the top of their bill that is only there as mating plumage on both the male and female and is shed thereafter. While I was lucky enough to find them fishing in abundance here at a crowded lake in Nebraska they prefer desolate shallow lakes and feed on nearly any type of fish and the occasional salamander. They are silent except when terrified so have no “call.” They nest on the ground and are partial to brackish water for their colonies. The male and female are indistinguishable in color and size. They share nesting duties, including construction and hatching the normal two eggs. Their nests are usually many miles from their feeding sites.

They are endangered but have repopulated in recent years and are now listed as a “breed of Least Concern.” 20 percent of the population breed in the Great Salt Lake Basin. There breeding range is into Alberta and northern Ontario and they winter in Mexico and California.

At the end of a long day of sightseeing, I had found the most remarkable. Here on a crowded lake north of Ogallala Nebraska, I saw my first White Pelicans. I would learn that they were abundant in other places. Despite my penchant for out of the way places I had never seen one or knew they existed.

I found them a marvelous surprise at the end of a day of surprises and their discovery and the others are a reminder of why I still do this. It is to see things I may not yet have seen and may never see again.

I am now able to say, if asked, or even if not, that I have seen Pelicans in Nebraska.

2009-07-19T17:39:00.000-07:00

Improbable Perfection

Jonathan Sanchez throws baseballs for a living. He does not throw them exceedingly well, but good enough to be a left handed pitcher in the Major Leagues for the San Francisco Giants. Until 10 days ago, he was a sometimes starter and relief pitcher for the team for two years and part of a third. He began his professional career at the age of 23, pitched two full years in the high minors and then in 2006 had a “cup of coffee” as they say with the Giants. The next year he went back to Fremont in AAA ball before coming back to the Giants for good that year pitching only 52 innings, yielding 57 hits and 28 walks. The scouting reports said he was prone to inconsistency and wildness. He is now 26 years old.

Yet on July 10, 2009, he did the improbable.

Sanchez is not having a good year. He had won only two games, lost eight, and found that the starting role he thought would be his was gone. He was languishing in the bullpen wondering about it all. He had worked hard in the spring to become the starter he had always hoped to be. Old habits came back to haunt him when the season started. He walked too many, stuck out too few, and had trouble keeping the ball in the ballpark. A month ago the Giants had signed the future Hall of Fame pitcher Randy Johnson who had made his mark on baseball as an Arizona Diamondback, suffered indignity and injury as a New York Yankee, has won 303 games, pitched a no hitter, won a World Series, and was clearly not going to sit behind Jonathan Sanchez .

Tonight it was his turn. But he had hurt his shoulder in his last start, so manager Bruce Bochy went back to Jonathan Sanchez. He called his father in Puerto Rico and told him he was starting again after three weeks. His father got on a plane and arrived in San Francisco at midnight.

At 7:05 on a Friday night, the 10th day in July , Jonathan Sanchez threw strike one to the San Diego Padres lead off hitter and shortstop named Everth Caberra to start the game in front of more than 30,000 fans in his home ball park.

Three electrifying hours later, he had faced only 28 Padre batters, one more than the minimum because his third baseman required three bounces and a bruised chest to pick up one of the many ground balls he threw this night. When it was done, the same Everth Caberra stood at home plate, the eleventh Padre of the night to admire strike three.

Jonathan Sanchez had pitched the first no hitter for the San Francisco Giants since the Bi-Centennial Year of 1976, and the first by a Giant pitcher in San Francisco since 1975. A young man who has struggled is whole, albiet short, career has now done what many great ones have never done. Had his third baseman been able to pick up a routine ground ball, he would have joined an elite group who allowed no base runners and pitched a perfect game.

Jonathan Sanchez has joined some of the best that have ever played the game, including the Randy Johnson whom he had replaced. His father was on the steps of the dugout when it was over, one of the first to congratulate him.

"It was awesome," said Jonathan Sanchez, it was a gift for his father. It was the first time he had ever seen him pitch a professional baseball game.

2009-06-28T17:34:00.000-07:00

THE END IS NEAR

“…home is the sailor, home from the sea and the hunter home from the hill…”
Robert Louis Stevenson

All journeys must end. In a day this one will too. It has ranged over 9,000 miles, 22 states, and two countries. It has gone well and fast. I have been in the desert twice, the mountains a lot and on the Right and Left Coast and a substantial part of the northern part of Middle America. Nothing significant has broken either inside or outside my faithful road warrior and companion, La Coachasita. One roof leak, now so many miles and months ago, it is just a dim memory considering that we have suffered high winds and rain for a majority of the trip before and since. We have endured three tornado alerts, one actual evacuation and the coldest, wettest spring since 1962 the weather service says. Yet as I drove to my last stop it still felt it was a good one.

The heat has finally come and we have stopped for one last time. It is time to kick the tires, make sure everything is tied down, throw out the trash, and gird for the trip through the “combat zone” of eastern Los Angeles, San Bernardino, and Riverside, California. It was once a paradise for urban planners but now an overpopulated watered desert, with a foreclosure rate as high as anywhere in the country and an unemployment rate to match. It is to me a hot and annoying drive. When last driven in the Zen like state of the last day on the road, a woman doing 50 miles per hour in an outside lane (there are six), was driving with her knees while she banged out a text message on her cell phone. As I drove past her by moving into the inner lanes I was astonished to notice at how few times she looked up at the road. It is the road home so it must be taken and if another like her is found this trip, well, it is just my welcome back to Southern California. One Twain-like commentator once said that the country once tilted and all the nuts rolled to the Left. While driving Interstate 15, it is easy to agree with the impression.

The last of the trip has been through a bit more of Idaho and then on to northern Nevada. Idaho State University is in Pocatello where we had two days of reasonable weather, their first of their spring/summer and one of violent storms as the next front rolled through. It is a nice city in this time of year built with the University nearly in the center.

My route followed a bit more of the Lincoln Highway, U.S. 50 in this part of the country. I wended my way to Carson City, the little known and less visited capital of Nevada. The Governor’s Mansion and the Legislature are on or near the main street. It is a small but bustling place with the usual combination of pretty parks, architecture and the faux glitz of the casinos which drive the economy in the state. At a stop overnight in Fernley just east of Reno, I found an RV Park with neighbors who lived there all year who had, as many others, left California for here for retirement some years ago to avoid state income tax, smog and the high cost of living. The statistics on foreclosures in Nevada are frightening. 50 per cent of the homeowners live in houses that now would sell for less than what they paid for them. This was just a sad fact to my travel trailer dwelling neighbors who had a cement slab, a patch of lawn of four by six, two flower box planters, three landscape lights and the monthly rent to worry about. They saw it as a good, if greatly downsized life.

The next day moved on as I kept driving in a way that perhaps suggest my disinterest in comgestion and tourism. I found it tedious, too busy and too hot. l I reached Mono Lake on U.S. 395 in the Sierra Mountains where, due to the altitude, coolness prevailed. I stopped at a campground near Yosemite that I had visited before. It was quiet and the weather pleasant in contrast to the heat I have found here near Lone Pine, California.

On my way down the Owens Valley I visited the World War II Japanese Internment Camp called Manzanar where many of the West Coast Japanese-Americans were either guarded or “concentrated” depending on who described it during the War after their initial evacuation to assembly areas. It is a haunting place, a one mile square that was surrounded by barbed wire. The remnants of barracks foundations and a reconstructed guard tower remind us of lost civil liberties in the name of panic. The visitor’s center is in what were then the school, auditorium and gymnasium. Inside is a reconstructed barracks area that was typically assigned to a family of four and preserved other artifacts, such as a “home plate” made of wood scrapes used in the evening pickup games between the barracks. Those who lived here tell eloquent stories about their time here. There is so much to tell, so many points of view. For it was a place of paradox and suffering, where 1,028 left this and other western camps to enlist in the Army that guarded them and their parents and fought bravely in units such as the 442nd Battalion and the 100th Regiment in Italy. Among the GIs in Italy, it was known as the “Purple Heart Battalion.” One received the Medal of Honor. It had one of the highest casualty rates of any unit of a comparable size. As President Truman said tothem at a ceremony after the war,” You fought not only the enemy, but you fought prejudice, and you won.”

The sons, and in some cases the daughters, of these men and women of Manzanar did that for a country that treated their parents as terrorist suspects, rounded up and sent here in March of 1942 and given hay to make matresses because of their ethnicity without regard to their loyalties, guarantees of due process, and a host of laws because it was easier than finding who might indeed be spies among them. As it happens, when the war was over, no Japanese American was found guilty, arrested or suspected of being a spy.

Life here was hard, cold in winter, dusty and hot in summer. The wind is always here. When the war ended they were simply released and trained or bussed “home” to find that their businesses and homes had been confiscated for no other reason than they were Japanese. They started over as laborers, gardeners, and housekeepers in homes smaller at times than the ones they once owned. The United States apologized to the survivors when it got around to it in the 1988 and awarded a sum for “reparations” to the then still surviving 60,000 of 125,000 original “detainees.” Manzanar and Mikato at American Falls Idaho are reminders. Sad ones to be sure that fear of mere ethnicity must be tempered with a healthy belief in a citizen’s Constitutional rights and the rule of law.

Lone Pine is uniquely situated geographically. It is the only town half way between the lowest point in North America at Death Valley 100 miles to the east (285 feet below sea level at Badwater) and Mt. Whitney, the highest point in the 48 states, to the west. It has the distinction of being the home to many of the competitors every year for the Death Valley Ultra Marathon, which begins on the floor of Death Valley at Badwater and winds upward, across two mountain ranges then up Mt Whitney. It lasts for 135 Miles. It is run by what some call “extreme athletes,” or “adventure athletes” who routinely race in triathlons and other “extreme” events. Some have less kind names for them. These competitors apparently have nothing else to do on the second weekend in July than try to “run” in up to 135 degree heat in the Valley up a cumulative vertical height of 4,700 feet. This year they will come from seventeen countries—50 will be doing it for at least the second time—and consist of a field of 17 women and 71 men. The youngest is 19 and the oldest is 67. They have 60 hours to try to finish. The record holder is from Brazil who finished in 22 hours and 51 minutes. The average age is 46 and the average finishing time is 40-48 hours. There is no prize money per se although there are sponsors. Anyone finishing under 48 hours is given what is described as the coveted “Badwater Belt buckle.” This has been officially been going on now for ten years, although there were more loosely organized races before that. What it takes is a desire to know what one’s body can stand and a type of insanity with which I am not familiar.

After Lone Pine, U.S. 395 goes nearly straight south and meets I-15 near Barstow California. When I reach the junction, I will still be two hundred miles from home, yet the trip will be over. It has been interesting as I had expected, beautiful in so many ways, and a three month odyssey of family visits, quiet peaceful times, new places and people.

Thank you for coming with me. I enjoyed your company. I hope you have liked some of the places we have been. There will be more about some of them later.

As it comes near enough to fill my windshield, I know I will be glad to have come full circle, back to the warm and welcoming place I call home.