Not a Total Loss

    Sometimes the stars will line up just right, the circumstances will come together in just the exact order, and then something happens.
    In this case a complete stranger in the dark of the night, clumsily backed his great heap of nutz and bolts smack into my son's poor little car in a parking lot, and crunkled in the hatchback. The bumper on the great behemoth never even touched the bumper on our car, but went completely over it and right into the soft parts, and now our hatchback was all mashed in and wouldn't open.
    When my slightly distraught son brought the car back home, being that I'm the house lunkhead, I was of course elected to sort out the damage and see what to do about it. The first consideration was to get the hatch working again, but I didn't meddle with it much until I had a consultation with our friendly insurance man the next day. The man who had bumped us had given us his information, and so I drove the car to his agent to get it appraised. When the results came back, we found out that our car is old enough to be officially considered nearly worthless (not yet old enough to be considered a valuable antique). What that means is, the insurance company declared our car "a total loss," instead of saying they would pay to fix it. We see things differently, there, but what can you do? So I was obliged to wade into the problem with a huge mallet, a crowbar, hooks and wires and stuff like that, and try to fix it myself. Whatever the insurance decided to pay, that would be my wages.
    I took the trim panels off from the inside, and after sweating and banging, wedging, prying and probing with hooks for a good long while, I still couldn't get the hatchback door open. Before resorting to the sawzall with a metal hogging blade, I took a break and went into the house. I was in a muck sweat. Naturally, everyone wanted to know how the project was going.
    "Well," I declared, "I found the problem."
    "Yeh?"
    "Yeh. Our poor little blue car is completely bashed in."
    What's really irritating is that I'm the only one around here that ever thinks my jokes are funny. Lauren was like, "Well, then let's call the man." But when I went back out there, I finally got the latch to let go, before I had to saw it apart. Now with the door open, I could unbolt the whole latch mechanism with its linkages, and bring it inside to my shop. Once the thing was down on the workbench under the lights, I could give it a good squinting at, and see how it was supposed to work and what was bent. When it comes to spindles shackles latches levers lugs links plates pins push-rods and cams, I can usually get the idea if I focus my lazer-beams on it long enough. So I found where a lever-arm had gotten bent just enough that its end was sliding past instead of engaging a lug inside the mechanism, and then by careful clamping and bending, I got it back into shape and functioning properly.
   After that, a little more work on the door with stake and mallet; fitting up the rubber gasket around the edge; making sure all moving latch parts had a clear run; then reassembling everything, oiling up, spray-painting, and there's a working hatchback door again. It was a little more drip-dried-looking than the body shop would have done, but functional, and way cheaper.
    A satisfying job, under the circumstances.
   
   

Luck 'o the Green

    A leetle google-eyed pilgrim, an American Green Tree Frog,  jumped out of a bunch of kale I had put in the sink to prepare for dinner. The kale had been in our fridge for three days, and who knows how many days had passed since it was picked, stored and shipped from its origin in Florida, to arrive at our store here in the frozen Northeast?
    The teeny green, golden-eyed hopper, as big as the end of my finger, looked healthy and was quite active, in spite of what must have been the awkward accommodations of his trip. I first saw him hopping along the counter behind the kitchen sink, and I was completely dumbfounded, until I thought of the kale I had just finished washing and chopping up.
    I cornered the little critter and got him to climb onto my hand, with his little splayed sticky-toes, and he sat for a moment and then leaped onto my face. Why, I take that as friendly!
    Here in Massachusetts, it was a frigid snowy winter, and the usual flying and crawling nuisances, frog food, were socked in until spring. You can leave a banana on the counter for two weeks at this season, and nothing will happen. So where do I get fruit flies to feed a tiny frog, in winter? He is counting on me now, even though that can hardly have been his original plan.
    I dangled a scrap of chicken on a toothpick, and made it twitch enticingly like a bug within striking distance of my unexpected dinner guest. The frog continued to look stonily into space, meditating on who knows what profound realities. Whatever I was doing, it certainly didn't seem to impress him much. I clapped the frog into a little screened glass terrarium I had, misted him with some water, and then pondered the possibilities. The first thing to do, was wash the kale again, anyway.
   
Eating kale:
    Crunch crunch, crunch crunch, >squish<
    "Oh...  I pray I never know what that was."
    No, thankfully, that didn't happen.

    But how do I feed the frog? I remembered one cold winter, I was looking for something in the back shed, and I turned over a wheelbarrow that had been leaning inverted against the wall. Inside the wheelbarrow I found a number of adult mosquitoes clinging motionless to the metal, wintering over under the shelter. They would move very slightly if touched.
    Mosquitoes would be a perfect size for the frog, so I suited up now, and took a flashlight out there to see what I could find. It actually didn't take me long to find several mosquitoes in a similar situation as before, under a plastic bucket. I picked them off with a tweezers and plopped them into a a plastic box and brought them inside. They were moving around within a few minutes of warming up, and before they started to fly, I dumped them into the frog's terrarium. One landed and was twitching right in front of the frog. He ignored it. Presently, I had a nice screened terrarium filled with buzzing flying mosquitoes, in my living room. The frog might not have been hungry, but the mosquitoes certainly seemed to be. Who in the world would be going through all this for a frog? After a few hours the mosquitoes seemed to have all died, stuck to the moist glass inside, and I hadn't seen the frog eat any of them.

Two weeks later:
    Bruno the castaway tree frog is doing well, eating two little crickets a day. I've set his terrarium up with a nice pool, a bed of live moss, a branched frond of spruce to climb, and an electric warming rock from the pet store. This same pet store provides little crickets that are conveniently bite-size for the frog. When I dump in a couple of crickets, the fierce predator looses no time in pouncing on his prey, with a lunge that is almost too swift for the eye to follow. I got the crickets the day following my discovering the frog, but he didn't eat until two days afterward. However, he is now settled in and doing fine. He dug himself a cozy hutch among the damp moss, and I see his golden eyes peering out.
    When I first set up the cage with the pool, I never saw him go near the water. He's a tree frog, but frogs like water. I thought that maybe he didn't know the pool was there, and I mentioned to my son Jake that maybe I should put the frog into the pool, so that he would know.
     Jake said, "Papa, suppose you were staying in a really nice hotel with a pool. How would you like it if the housekeeper came and threw you into the pool, in case you didn't know it was there?"

Good point. Anyway, a few days later, I saw the frog climbing out of the water.
    But the sad thing about Bruno the Leetle Google-Eyed Tree Frog, is that he will never get married and have a family, unless it's a she, in which case, she never will, because there's only one of him/her. But all things considered, he's one lucky frog to have landed, of all places that he might have, in my kitchen.

---------------------------------

You can watch a short video of Bruno catching a cricket:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5MBwn14zR4

Graduate Smart

    My old college (Antioch College, '73) asked for an updated blurb for their alumni directory.
Here is what I gave them -

    My major in Early Music has been a great preparation for renovating bathrooms, and smearing putty on rotting windowsills. After 10 years of doing that, I became a variety entertainer / musician, learning how to beg for quarters on the street.
     I have a wife and 2 wonderful grown sons, who will inherit improbable quantities of extremely weird junk.
     Check out www.bellowphone.com for a squint at some of these things.

Wing and a Prayer

    A year and a half ago, I broke my leg. It's not that uncommon for people to do it, but in my case, it was fairly humiliating as well as being a major ouchie; my last words before the accident were,
"What could go wrong?"
    One bad thing about slipping sideways while demonstrating an extreme cornering maneuver
on your bicycle, even with all the skill that lots of practicing will give you, and the thrill of being on the performance edge and having no fear, is that now, after one simple minor mistake, now you will have fear and will always have fear, instead of the feeling of exhilaration and invulnerability you used to have when you were riding. I used to like to see how tightly and efficiently I could take certain corners. The idea was to maximize the distance I would coast without pedaling after the turn, so I could gauge how well I had taken the corner, compared to my previous attempts. At 60 years old, I suppose it was inevitable that I would screw up eventually.
    Well, I wiped out while giving a triumphant demonstration on one of my practice courses, while my wife was watching. Then I was on my back, aware that things in my hip area were not in their usual places. I figured by the feel of things, that I had dislocated my hip joint, and I pushed my leg back into place as well as I could.
    "Should I call 911?" asked my slightly horrified wife.
    "Call 911," I told Lauren. That's the first time I've ever said that, but I had a good reason. I had tried to move my leg, and it had just flopped over; a really bad feeling to experience.
    Lying helpless on my back, staying as motionless as I could manage; ambulance coming, being shifted from stretchers, to gurneys, receiving rooms, down long cold corridors to x-ray rooms.
    "No," I was finally told by a nurse, who had a sympathetic smile, "No, you're not going home tonight. You better forget about that idea."  Where I was going, was surgery; which finally happened about 30 hours after the accident.
    The good surgeon went in there, bound up and trussed my snapped thigh bone using metal rods and cords, and at last I was put in a recovery ward. I found myself among old people who had broken their hip doing things like turning around a little too fast when the phone rang, and losing their balance. Well, these are my people now, and it turns out that my body breaks just the same as theirs did.
    But soon I found out that the accident cases weren't the predominant thing in this place; most of these people were here because they had come in for elective surgery; they were not emergency cases, they were people who had made plans to be here. Consequently, the place was set up like some grotesque vacation resort.
    I've got to give the staff credit for trying to keep the mood cheerful for people in pain, but the social worker assigned to my case might at least have read my chart, before she gently chided me one morning, saying they had not seen me much in the social room at their scheduled activities. Well, what I knew and she didn't know, is that I had been in survival mode for the past several days; not really in a partying mood at all. Having to use a walker to painfully make my way to the bathroom, hadn't been in my wildest imaginings a week ago. Biking, running, doing my comedy shows (which I had to cancel), hopping, juggling: these were the things I had planned.
    Two weeks I was in the ward: needles at 6:30 in the morning; no privacy; loud voices perpetually discussing medical issues; TV's playing everywhere; a stoic attempt at cheerfulness on my part. On the morning of my discharge the social worker bustled in, and gave me a pen with a big pom-pom on the end of it, and a parti-colored guest book to sign, and she brightly asked me, "Had I enjoyed my stay?"
    This was an unexpected question. Considering that this had been the most grueling two-week-long nightmare of my entire life; that I was eternally grateful that I was finally leaving here and going back to my home; the answer would have to be: not that much.
    But I replied, "I'm truly grateful for the compassion and skill of all the wonderful staff here. I couldn't have made it without their care." Her face fell a little, in confusion; she left the book with me and bustled out. I read some of the entries in the guest book; they were all very upbeat, and I wrote something like, "Keep up the good work!" Then I laid the pom-pom down on the ribbon-bedecked book, and got ready to leave.

    I got back on the bike in a little over two months, before I could walk very well yet. I had just gotten off crutches and I could hobble for short distances with a cane. I really missed biking, so I tried it, carefully, and I found I could go a few miles the first time out. It really felt great, though I couldn't push much with the injured leg, and I didn't do any extreme cornering (ha ha). I felt like I was flying.
Flying slowly, with the immediate possibility of crashing and burning, but still, back in the saddle again.

You Break It, I Buy It

    For $2, how can you pass up a vintage West German chiming mantel clock, even if it's busted?
    I was at a yard sale, and this handsome wood-case brass clock caught my eye, with its
"$2, Needs Work" sticker. I thought, it's the rare clock that can stump me for long, and the problem is usually something so simple that I often feel guilty for keeping someone's once-treasured timepiece, after I've gotten it running again. Especially if the whole job takes me only 20 minutes.
    As I was giving the man my 2 bucks for the clock, I happened to mention my experience that the trouble was usually something easy to find and correct. My big mouth: the man's eyes lit up with a wild, wistful hope, and he said, "Do you really think you can fix it?"
    Nutz; I wanted this clock, but the thing obviously meant a lot to him; I began to feel that I wasn't going to be able to keep it, if I could get it repaired. The man went on to tell me it had been a wedding present from his mother, many years ago. "Eventually it started running slower and slower," he told me, "and I thought that if I kept winding it harder, I could fix that." I listened to all this with a sinking feeling, for several reasons; this clock has been abused, and I'm still going to have to fix it, and I really can't keep it. When I mentioned the usual necessity for periodic cleaning, as well as oiling to keep a clock running well, the man was surprised.
    "I didn't know that," he told me with interest.
    Well, for starters, I could see that the clock needed more than just a cleaning. The mainspring had let go and come down with a violent run, and the clock couldn't be wound anymore; it just went "kek, kek, kek" when you turned the key. I didn't press for details of how that had occurred, because the man had already given me a pretty good idea, and he didn't feel good about it. I gave him the two dollars, and I took the machine home to operate.
    The first thing I did was to remove the brass works from the wooden case, and then I disengaged all the chiming works from the main clockwork. Then I took out the mainspring drum, and inside there I found that the end of the spring had been bent so it couldn't hook onto the shaft anymore. It was simple to re-form the spring around a mandrel, and get it to hook up again, but then I found that the ratchet that's supposed to keep the spring from unwinding, was also bent. I fixed that too, and now I could wind the clock. But before I did, I reached in with some little tiny paint brushes and solvent, and I cleaned all the gunk from every pivot point and all the gears and pinions; then, using a toothpick I put a tiny dot of clock oil on each spot that requires it. Just the right size drop will stay put with surface tension, and it will keep the end of the shaft (the pivot) lubricated. Too much oil, too big a drop, will actually give you less oil in that spot ultimately, because the drop will run down, and the oil will drain off. And you don't want oil running here and there, collecting dust, and creating gunk that can eventually slow and stop the gears.
    So all this took me only an hour or two, and now I was ready to see how the clock would run. I was still happy to bring it back to the man if I found that all was well. But it wasn't. The machine ticked weakly, then stopped. I got it to run for a few more minutes, feebly, and then it wouldn't run any more at all. Now it was obvious that serious surgery was going to be required, but what was the problem? And if I ended up putting a lot of work into it, it was going to be a lot harder to give it back to the man when I was done. I put the clock on the shelf for a few days, pondering these questions. Eventually, two things occurred to me: 1. I was resolved that this was not my clock, and I wanted to return it in working condition. 2. It was going to be a big job. 
    I've tinkered with a number of clocks, but one thing I've always been afraid to do is to separate the two plates that hold all the gears. Once you do that, I've always thought, you will end up with a mare's nest of chaos and confusion. All the numerous shafts and gears will teeter and fall this way and that, and no power on earth will ever be able to get it back together. Every teeny shaft has to be lined up with its tiny hole in the opposite plate, all at once. It's not possible. But unless I was going to give up, I was going to have to take the plunge, and hope that Yoda would show up in a vision or something.
    I went ahead and unscrewed the vital nuts, and then I separated the plates: the dreaded plates. Clicketty-ticketty: there they all went; now there was no turning back. I extracted the escapement mechanism; this is a little delicate back-and-forth wiggle-waggling piece: it's the thing that makes the clock go tick-tock. I needed to remove that piece so I could run the gear train around and see if I could find out which part of it was not running free.
    In the event, I'm glad I got cornered into having to do this complicated operation, because it really wasn't as hard to reassemble everything as I had feared. You just work your way from one side to the other, carefully guiding each shaft into its hole, while gently squeezing the plates together just enough to keep the ones in place that are there already. I got everything back together after removing the escapement mechanism, and now I was free to analyze the gear train.
    It didn't take me long to find the trouble, and it was serious. When the mainspring had let go with its sudden run, it had kicked back so hard that it bent one of the gear shafts. It was hard to spot it, but once found, it was easy to see. The bent shaft had turned as far as it could when I was first attempting to get the clock to tick, and then the shaft had reached the jamming point and would turn no more.
    So I removed the bent shaft from the works, and I fixed it; I drilled an accurate hole into a square block of aluminum, another hole into an aluminum bar to use for a lever, and using the block and lever I carefully straightened the shaft. I levered it little by little, turning it in the block until the shaft with its gear would turn in the hole with no wobble. Then I reassembled the gears into the clockworks (that was Dreaded Plates Assembly, the second time), and the whole train ran beautifully with no binding that I could feel at all.
    Then I put back the escapement assembly, and got everything else reassembled into the clock, got it all adjusted and wound the mainspring just a little. The clock started to run, ticking cheerfully. As a matter of fact, it was now so well cleaned and efficient, that the balance wheel wouldn't stay still, no matter how carefully I tried to stop it; it would start itself again, ticking with a solid quiet murmur like a beating heart.
    I also cleaned and adjusted the chime and strike mechanism, and it all ran properly, chiming on the quarter, striking the appropriate hour, and keeping excellent time. The whole job was a full day's work, plus a little more.
    As of this writing, the clock has been running for three days (it's a 31 day clock) and it's running as accurately as can be. I've hardly had to adjust the balance wheel at all. (The wheel has an ingenious mechanism for doing that, which I've never seen before: a lever on the wheel moves a pair of weights in or out, adjusting the speed of oscillation the way a ballerina will make herself spin faster by pulling her arms in closer to her sides.)
    But, also as of this writing, I have not returned the clock. The man has no idea that I even mean to. But when I bought his clock a week ago, one of the last things he said to me was, "Do you think you will be able to fix it?"
    I did think so. But will I be able to return it?

Piano Man

    I accompanied my friend John to his afternoon gig playing piano in the elegant lobby of the Red Lion Inn at Stockbridge.
    For three hours I sat and listened with great enjoyment, as he played through his endlessly varied repertoire of jazz, ragtime and classical pieces. I love John's playing. But the patrons filed past without a sideways glance: the full-length mink coats, the impeccable Italian suits, being ushered to their places at tables accoutered for the cream of American privilege.
    John played on, and after he finished his last set, he shut the piano and went off to the bathroom. Then I sidled over and gingerly sat down on the gleaming bench, opened the piano, and hesitantly began to play a rendition of my one Scott Joplin piece, Maple Leaf Rag. I was eager to try out the beautiful Steinway instrument, but I felt awkward to touch it in that place, after John's creative and masterful playing. 
    So as a result of my reticence- fear, actually- my playing was lukewarm at best, and in the second movement of the piece I lost my place altogether. In a controlled panic, I faked along dismally for a few bars, and when I managed to find my way again, my only thought was to conclude as gracefully as possible and get out of there. Which I did, finishing with a conclusive phrase, in what would ordinarily be the middle of my arrangement. I never felt the music at all; just embarrassment.
    After I was done and had shut the cover of the piano, John returned, and we were chatting as we put on our coats to leave. A lady came over to us from an adjacent sitting room around the corner, and she walked up to me, ignoring John completely. She said to me, "I loved your Scott Joplin."
I never blinked, but I thanked her, and she walked on.
    Probably, the lady had just arrived, and hadn't been there when John was playing, but it was still pretty funny. The master plays his heart out for three hours and is pretty much ignored, and then this bum sneaks in and plays a hideously stumbling rendition of one-half of a piece, and then the bum gets the glory. 
       

Two Show Stories

A Nice Tip -

    A young boy was watching me set up before a show, and his conversation was somewhat rude: skeptical and confrontative: 
    "What is this for?" "A kid I know can do that!" "Why do you have horns?"
    I was nice to him, although busy, and I told him that he would see how everything works, once the show started; not to worry.
    So I played the show, and afterward the boy was completely changed. He came politely up to me and asked, "Do people ever give you money after you play?" I explained to the boy that when somebody decides that he wants me to do a show, he'll talk to me beforehand, and we'll make an agreement of what I'll get paid to come and do it. 
    The boy said, "That's not what I meant. I mean, do the people who watch you ever give you money after they see it?" I said no, not really. He said he wanted to give me some money, and he solemnly presented me with a nickel.
    I accepted the nickel, and I put it in my pocket with sincere thanks.

------------------------------------

Rescue -

    This happened before another show, a very large summer school show. I had finished getting my stuff set up and ready on the stage, and I was pacing back and forth in an empty hallway behind the performing hall, waiting till it was time to go in. I could hear the hectic noise from inside, where the teachers were wrangling all the kids into their places; there were over a thousand young boys from two parochial schools, and maybe 150 staff and teachers, all men. So as I was pacing back and forth out in the hallway, I saw a little boy huddled against the wall by himself, crying. I went over to him and asked what was wrong, why wasn't he inside?
    He said, "I lost my ticket." The tickets didn't cost anything, but all the kids had been given one, for some reason of keeping the event organized.
    The boy was trying to put a brave face on it, but he was clearly in deep distress, and he had snuck away out of the line somehow. I said, "Come on, I think we can get you in."
    I brought him inside and found a teacher in the hubbub, and explained matters, and asked if this boy could be let in without his ticket. The teacher said, "Of course," and he took the boy and went off with him to find his class.
    I performed the show, and it was fun in its way, but it was one of the really challenging situations; the kids started storming the stage more than once, grabbing props and stuff, and all the teachers had to run among them shouting and trying to restore order. This was summer school, with discipline a bit less rigorous than regular session, but it was still a bit shocking. I never let it rattle me, but I kept everything happy and upbeat, and pretended that this happens all the time. I guess, for these people it does; they're used to it. (Earlier, when I had been negotiating the show over the phone, the teacher had commented that they could stop the show at any point if I needed it, so they could discipline the kids. These comments puzzled me, and caused me some uneasiness. Why would he be telling me that?) As it turns out, everything went better than they expected, and the teachers were thanking me profusely after the show. 
     But as for that little boy that I found in the hallway, I never even asked his name, or found out where he ended up sitting; in the hurry of spirits before the show, I neglected to do that. I'm not even sure the boy was aware, at the time, that I was "the guy".
    Well, I hope he liked the show. I did feel a real bond for him; he reminded me exactly of the sort of thing I might have done when I was his age.

  

I Don't Do B and E's -chasing down a midnight burglar

         I once made a man cry. He was a big tough guy, a punk, and he was on a crime spree. At first glance, he was not the sort you could picture breaking down and blubbering like a baby. 
         I was in my thirties at the time, living in the city, and I spotted this man out my window at about 2:00 in the morning. He was moving like a pale ghost in the shadows between the buildings. Burglaries were common around where we lived; as a matter of fact, our house had been burglarized just the week before. Fortunately, that job had been interrupted in the very act. One of our housemates had returned home late at night, and had frightened off the intruder. We had found all my tools piled in boxes by the back door, ready to go.
         What a feeling I had seeing that: "Sure, help yourself!" I had thought. "Take whatever you want; it's all free!" I was working as a cabinetmaker at the time, and these tools were my livelihood. Plus, I had been collecting tools since I was a boy, and this was a very personal violation to me.
         So, it's not hard to imagine what I felt when I saw a suspicious character sneaking between the houses across the street at two in the morning, just a week after that incident.  I was furious, and my heart instantly began pounding with adrenaline.  I was clad only in shorts, a T-shirt and slippers, but I had no time even to grab a jacket. I slipped silently out the front door into the cold darkness, in pursuit of the pale figure which had slipped out of sight around the corner.
         I followed him down the block, keeping within the shadows myself, as I watched him darting into alleys and inspecting locked windows. I had no thought other than to keep him in sight, and maybe to dash back to my house to call the cops if  I saw him enter a building.  
         This was the situation as we reached the end of the street, and he crossed the brightly lit but deserted intersection. I saw him crouch down and examine the lock of a bicycle which was chained to a lamppost. I had no way to remain in concealment at this point if I still wanted to follow him, and now I had all the proof I needed that he was up to no good.  So without really thinking about what I was doing, I strode across the street right towards him and said, "Nice bike."
         As I approached him he stood up and fixed me with an intense and venomous look of hatred. He seemed suddenly to tower over me, his eyes an ugly red and his body tense like a viper poised to strike.  His first words to me were something to the effect of, "If you called the cops on me, I'm going to beat the **** out of you while they watch."
         I started talking fast. I told him to relax; I didn't call the cops, but I just couldn't let him do what I saw him doing. He kept calling me "you little toad"  and telling me how stupid I was and how little I understood my danger. I told him, stop calling me "little toad";  I understand what I'm doing, but in some small way you must respect that I'm only trying to act like a good citizen and stop a crime, at personal risk to myself.
         We went back and forth in this way for a while. We were both still quite heated, although the dangerous intensity of the first encounter had relaxed somewhat. I wanted to get through to him somehow, and I began to spin a little yarn.  I didn't want him to know where I lived, so I didn't tell him that we had been broken into just last week. Maybe he was the very one that did it. So I made up a story, telling him I was an auto mechanic. I told him my shop had been broken into, and that ten thousand dollars worth of tools and equipment had been stolen. I said I had no way of replacing the equipment and was now completely busted; ruined.  I was a hard working man, I said, and now I can't even pay my rent.  It was the best story I could come up with on the spur of the moment.
        "How do you feel about that?" I asked the man. 
         "I don't give a **** about that", was the man's response. " It was your fault for leaving the door unlocked." 
         "I didn't leave the door unlocked,"  I said.  "The guy broke the door in."
          "I don't do B and E's" the man told me.  I told him it doesn't matter if you do breaking and entering, you're still a thief and you're hurting innocent people. Doesn't that matter at all to you? 
          It didn't matter to him. Nothing seemed to matter to him. We had been talking a long while, and I was running out of things to say, when the man suddenly got quite emotional and blurted out, "I don't care about anyone but myself. Myself, and my mother."
         That was all I needed. I asked him, "What will you do if you come home someday and you find that your mother has been hurt? Some punk has knocked her down, cut her purse and run away with it. That was all the money she had, and she got hurt when she fell down. How would you feel about this?"
         "I would kill the **** who did it.  I would kill him."  he told me passionately, the red light burning in his eyes again.
         "No you wouldn't,"  I told him.  "The thing is, you never find the guy who did this. By the time you find your mother hurt, it's already three hours since she was attacked, and you never find the guy who did it. He's gotten clean away. Now, how do you feel?  How do you feel, knowing that there are people out there that you can't stop, who don't care about you or anything, as long as they get what they want?"
         It was at this point that the man started crying. He just literally broke down in great heaving sobs, telling me he would be good some day, he was just too angry, he was so sorry but he would be good some day. 
         All of a sudden, reaction set in with me as well. I started shivering. I looked up and realized it was getting  light out. The man was sobbing and calling out after me,  but there was nothing more I could do. I was freezing there in my shorts in the cold light of dawn, and I ran home.

Niagara Rime: oops; the cops again

Last winter, 2011-

    I had a very interesting conversation with 2 state troopers in the bitter cold pre-dawn hour this morning, on an ice covered walkway overlooking Niagara Falls. First they asked me, was that my van? Then, what was I doing there, and had I not seen the barriers that I had gone past in order to get to this spot?  I quickly pointed out that I had not crossed the barriers; I had entered the area by the road that said "No Entry: Park Service Vehicles Only." It was a logical choice at 4:30 in the morning, upon arriving at the park after a long drive, only to find it closed due to icy conditions.

    It was well worth the trespassing. There was a vast plume of fog and mist billowing down the echoing chasm, with the falls thundering through it, and all the trees on the rim of the gorge had a thick coating of rime-ice. I found it perfectly enchanting. But then the officers arrived, and they were skeptical.
 
    "Are you sure you didn't come here to hurt yourself; something along those lines?" one of them kept asking me. He wouldn't come right out and say what he was insinuating; anyway, I kept saying of course not.
    Finally, after the third or fourth question and answer, I gazed out over the yawning edge of the precipice, and observed, "If I had come here to hurt myself, I would be dead now."
    This was the wrong answer. "Why do you say that?!" the officer barked in alarm, all his suspicions redoubled. The other fellow was giving me an intense squint.

    "Look," I told them, "I came here to view the Falls. I love Niagara Falls; I would never dream of doing anything to harm this park, or myself."  Finally, they relaxed a bit.

   "You understand why we have to ask these questions," one asked me. I assured them, very apologetically, that I did understand. I implored them to let me be an honorary Park Service Vehicle, just for 20 minutes, just this once.

   "Why should I do that?" the officer asked. He was softening up.

    And thus began our interesting talk. The conversation had been preceded by the usual, "May I see some identification," and then the other routine questions about why I was there at that unusual hour and season. Didn't I know that I could be liable for some serious fines for what I had done?  Why, the van was even pointed in the wrong direction on a one-way avenue! (Deserted though it was.)

    My situation, as I explained it to them, was that I was driving all night on my return trip back to Boston from Cleveland, where I had driven my son to his college, and I had not been expecting anyone to be stirring at this beastly hour: the dark hour before dawn in the ghostly fog. However, as they explained to me, at this time the night watch at the park happened to be on high alert for suicides. Unstable characters were drawn to this place frequently, especially at this season, and there had been an unpleasant event right on this spot a mere week ago.  A man had illegally entered the park (imagine that!) at much the same time as this, and he had disappeared without a trace: presumed dead over the falls. And without question, my present activity certainly fell into the category of "irregular." However, they ended up letting me drive away, which I considered terribly decent of them.

    "Be careful," one said. "This place is a sheet of ice. I fell down investigating your van." I didn't press him for further details about that; I told him I would be careful. They even directed me to the one viewing area that was still open to public access, with a parking lot within walking distance of one of the finest overlooks. It was awesome: you could walk right up to a railing at the icy edge of the thundering torrent; swirling mist, bitter cold, and a faint gleam of dawn beginning. I went and stood for awhile, immersed in the roaring thunder, on the verge of infinity.
    I'm sure they were watching me from concealment, and I'm sure they were relieved to finally see my taillights; to find out that I was not a jumper after all.

Web Design for Spiders

    While sitting at the kitchen table, I noticed a tiny yellow spider poised in midair below the ceiling light fixture. I pointed it out to my son Jake, and we both watched it. The spider was the size of a pinhead, or a fruitfly, and it was dangling motionless on its silk thread, about a foot below the light. As we watched, the spider swiftly descended another inch, another two inches, paying out its silk, and then it paused again. It still had more than six feet to go before it would reach the floor, and establish a guy-line for constructing its web.
    I looked at the scale of the tiny spider, and the relatively enormous distance it still had to go to reach the floor, and I decided that the scale of distance was too great in this case; it wouldn't be practical to use all that silk. But the spider can not see how far the distance is; its vision is good, but only at very close range. When starting out to make a web, the spider has to investigate a possibility like this by making an attempt, and finding out what happens.
     The spider pays out its gossamer lifeline by squirting liquid silk through an array of nozzles, or spinnerets, on its abdomen, and the extruded liquid hardens almost instantly into a strong thread. The spider clings to this thread with the claws on its hind legs, walking itself down as the thread is paying out. Quite a little miracle in itself.
    But decisions of economy have to be made, for the supply of silk isn't endless. I could see that the spider had probably miscalculated in this case, and the attempt to reach the floor with a strand was not going to be practical. As we watched, the tiny arachnid let itself down another couple of inches, then paused again, motionless on the nearly invisible line. There was still a vast gulf between it and the floor.
    All at once, the spider's sensorium, or brain, reached the appropriate conclusion and it suddenly began to climb back up. The silk it had expended on its downward exploration was gathered back in as it climbed, to be ingested and reprocessed into more silk for later use. The spider ascended rapidly, hand over fist, and it didn't pause until it regained the ceiling light fixture, there, presumably, to formulate a new plan.

Reformed Pirates -an earlier adventure

    It was Michael, the eccentric hippie renegade, who collared us and made us return the canoe that we stole.
    Well, perhaps "stole" is too strong a word for what Dave and I did. We only snuck into Camp Albocondo under cover of midnight, lifted one of the red fiberglass canoes from the racks, found some boards which we could use as paddles, and hauled everything down to the river and put in. Then we shoved off downstream into the darkness.
    All right: stole.
    But we did intend to bring everything back in a few weeks. When you are 16 or 17 (it was in the late 1960's), sometimes moral distinctions can be a little fuzzy. We reasoned: hey, they're a camp; they're rich; they won't miss one canoe. How wrong we were, as you will see.
    It was early winter and there was a pretty good nip in the air, but we were bundled up and we had physical exertions to keep us warm. I paddled stern, guiding us down the swift current of the Toms River, deep in the piney woods where the stream is narrow and twisty. My friend Dave was in the bow, and he couldn't do much more than fend off with his board, as we would come around a sharp bend and get caught by an unseen snag across our passage. Obstacles would loom up quickly in the starlight, and Dave had only his right arm to wield the paddle; he was carefully favoring the left, which was in a cast and still tender from having been recently broken. That's right, and don't ask me what we were thinking, but I believe we had been planning this escapade for awhile, previous to Dave's accident.
    I don't remember if it was cloudy or clear, but there was enough light to see a little. It was an enchanting passage through the winter woods, taking on a dreamlike quality after about two hours; Dave hunkered in the bows, fending off with his makeshift oar, and getting progressively colder; his broken arm beginning to hurt more. I steered as carefully as I could, surging with the current around snags and bushes if I could manage it, as they hove into view in the dimness.
    The dream was abruptly shattered by an ominous glow and a gushing sound coming from up ahead. We emerged around a bend into an open reach of water with no trees, and a baleful glare of floodlights around us, as the current propelled our boat straight into and through the gushing effluent from a huge 6-foot outflow pipe, dumping liquid waste from the nearby Toms River Chemical plant. The horrid gloop was brown and foamy, and stunk violently. (This dumping was illegal even back then in the 60's; the plant, known then as CIBA, was always in legal battles, although the outflow pipe was a pretty long way from the camp, and it's likely that campers seldom or never came this far. Not at night, anyway.)
    The stench and globs of brown foam stayed with us the rest of the way downriver. Surging along on the dark, swift current winding amongst the trees, mile after mile, we were afraid to splash even a drop of the now-stinking water into the boat.
    As dawn was breaking, we reached the river's mouth by Toms River town, where the stream opens out into the expansive reach of water that turns into Barnegat Bay. Our destination at this point was about a half mile further across the open water, to a grassy point of land where we intended to hide the canoe. Then from there we would hike to our homes, before our parents were even aware that we had been out.
    We made this last stretch paddling straight into the teeth of a horizontal blizzard of light snow, that had sprung up from dead ahead. We forged into it across the open water in the pale light of dawn, the frigid wind-driven wavelets breaking against our bows, and Dave helping to paddle as well as he could. We made it across to the point of land, drew up into the long grass and hid the canoe. We were exhausted, freezing, and exhilarated. We had done it. Now we parted, and hiked to our respective homes and a few hours of bed.
    So that was that. But who is this Michael, how did he find out about our caper, and what happened next?
    Michael is David's older brother, and, simply answered, Dave told him what we had done. As I mentioned, we were more proud than ashamed of it. But Michael was a deep-eyed, evangelistical hippie who believed in Truth and Justice; his long penetrating gazes straight into my eyes would make me begin to squirm, and wonder why he didn't look somewhere else for awhile. But what we had done was Wrong; we would not be bringing the canoe back in a few weeks under cover of darkness: we would be bringing it back now; this very hour, and confess to the faces of the camp owners.
    As of this point, the canoe had been hidden in the snow-dusted long grass out at the point, for several days. We hadn't felt like venturing out into the winter blasts again, to use it.
    But whether or no, Michael was insistent; we lashed the boat onto the top of his car, and drove it back out to the camp up in the woods.
    There were people in the camp office. They saw their canoe drive up. They were astonished; it belonged to a private member, who had been combing the river up and down for days, bereft at the loss of his prize boat. Where had we found it?
    Dave and I were led forward by the noses, as it were, and forced to produce our tale. The man's jaw dropped, between gratitude, anger, and plain bewilderment. Anger won out, to be replaced again by gratitude, and finally, a helpless loss for words. He just couldn't figure out what to say. We left him with his property; us much reddened about the ears as we sheepishly left the office, carrying with us a deep lesson that has endured.
    Thank you, Michael, for encouraging us to give this story a better ending than it might have had.

Laundry Bag / Pipe Bomb -unusual adventures of a 14-year old

    Can you picture a 14 year old boy getting stopped by the police, for suspicious behavior? What might he have been doing?
    The boy had been riding his bike one-handed down a main road, with a large canvas sack perched on his shoulder. This was an ordinary routine for the boy, and so he was quite surprised when a cruiser pulled him over with its lights flashing. The interruption was inconvenient, but it was more amusing than alarming.
    It became even more amusing when the boy dumped out the contents of the sack, at the insistence of the officer. This revealed nothing more than piles of soiled socks, T-shirts, underpants, and the like.
   "I told you it was just my laundry," the boy was telling the now bewildered cop.
    The boy himself found nothing unusual in carrying his sack of laundry down to the local laundromat, for he was used to being a bit out of step with other boys his age, and I know this because the boy was myself.  My mother was who knows where at the time, possibly off on one of her weekend jaunts with her acting troupe or perhaps just working late at her hat check job in the local night club.
    I  got used to not seeing my mom around, a lot of the time.  Starting back when I was about twelve, I can remember my brother and I finding a note and some money on the kitchen table, and taking our bikes down to the food store and coming back with TV dinners and ice cream pops. It was all just routine to us.
    It could lead to problems though. I once lost a friend due to my unusual circumstances, and it wasn't through prejudice, it was through misunderstanding. My new acquaintance was another student I met when I was a freshman in high school, and we hung around that day. He asked me what my phone number was so we could get together after school.  When I informed him sheepishly that we didn't have a phone at home, he found it so unbelievable that, in short, he didn't believe me. We had just met; he had no idea of my mother's tendency to run up a large phone bill, and then be unable to pay, causing our phone service to be shut off. This happened periodically, and we were sometimes without the phone for extended periods of time.
    I tried to explain it but he thought I was trying to trick him or fool him; his feelings were hurt and he was suspicious of me from then on. We drifted apart and never became friends. The thought still rankles me. 
    Probably most boys feel at some time or other that they have no one that they can tell their problems to. In my case, it must have happened a lot, for I developed some unusual leisure time activities, such as making large firecrackers, and pipe bombs. I used to set off explosions in a vacant lot near my house late at night, just to hide in the woods and watch all the lights in the houses go on, up and down the street. I just wanted people to know I was there, even if they didn't know who I was.  It sounds kind of stupid to say it now, but I meant no harm.
    Now, can you picture a boy getting stopped by the police, carrying, not a bag of laundry this time, but a thick chunk of iron pipe with a ten inch section of red fuse sticking out the end?  I was 15 years old, walking down the street with my friend Dave, in about the same place where the laundry incident happened.  There was a large vacant gravel pit behind the the shopping center where I did my laundry, and that's where we were heading, Dave and I. We had not a care in the world, just joy of our newest pipe bomb and anticipation of the huge boom it was going to make when we got it out to the gravel pit.
    Now, the cops in my town at that time during the early 60's were actually pretty suspicious. It was a time of national unrest, and local crime, and I was not unused to being stopped and questioned. Sometimes it just happened when I was riding my bike late at night. Sometimes it was just because I looked like a hippie and they wanted to find drugs. But I never took it personally, and I never got busted for anything.
    David, on the other hand, had a real grudge against the cops. For instance, one time we stopped to investigate a local disturbance. A man was raving and yelling and it turns out he had been sniffing glue and was acting threatening. Dave and I were watching from some way off, having stopped our bikes by the road, and we got approached by two cops. Of all weird things, they searched Dave and confiscated his pocketknife, and he ended up never getting it back. Stuff like that was always happening to Dave, and he was mad at all cops.
    Me, I didn't mind 'em. Even when I was carrying a large explosive device, it never occurred to me to worry. 
     On this occasion, Dave said, "Len, could you please stick that thing up your sleeve? What'll you say about it if the cops stop us this time?  'Oh, nothing, officer. Just an ol'  bomb.'" 
           Well, Dave was right, there.  It couldn't hurt anything to stick it up the sleeve of my coat, so I did, and we had no trouble. We had a lovely time setting off the bomb, back in the gravel pit. It shook the ground with a profound thumping boom, accompanied by a plaintive whining hum of shards of iron spinning away into the distance. I thought, "I bet they heard that one!"
    Unusual experience, perhaps, in the life of a young boy, but all just routine to me.

Itching Powder- a very improbable mistake

     Who put itching powder on their principal's seat when they were in grade school? Just me?
     Well, the fact is, I would never have done it on purpose.
     In our town, there was a little corner store called The Spot. At that time, the novelty items that one could obtain were somewhat more interesting than those available today, and by saving one's milk money, one could purchase, for instance, a tin of cigarette loads for ten cents. These were slivers of wood, covered in a white powder: highly toxic as I found out years later (it was lead azide, I learned). It did say on the tin, Do Not Put in Mouth, but it didn't mention why, or that the powder was poisonous just to get on your fingers (which it easily did). Not to mention, toxic to your victim when he gasped in the exploding gasses.
    However, all we knew at the time is that the loads worked swell. You would insert one into the end of a cigarette, and when the unsuspecting smoker applied the match, the load would explode with a ringing crack, shattering the end of the cigarette. I only tried this on my mother once; the confetti-bits of tobacco and paper shreds were still fluttering in the air when she rounded on me; she was very free with the back end of a hairbrush for lesser pranks than this, but it was (almost) worth it this one time.
     Another item that could be purchased at The Spot, besides whoopee cushions of course, was itching powder. I have no idea what this material was made of; probably asbestos, or shredded fiberglass, but it, too, was very effective, as you, dear reader, shall see. On the package, the powder was recommended to be dropped down someone's shirt.
    Now, the principal of our school, Mr. Stouter, was a kindly, balding man who always had a smile for us children when he saw us in the hall. He seemed to always be on our side, whatever might happen.
    For instance, one time Mr. Stouter was called upon to reprimand me, by my second grade teacher, Miss Skidmore. She was a crabby, cross-grained old lady who was always finding something to lose her patience over, and she hauled me down to the office one morning to present my latest crime to the principal, that we might hear his judgment.
     This is what I had done that morning. Before class began, we would recite the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag, and then we would bow our heads, close our eyes and recite the Lord's Prayer. I was respectful of these customs, and I would obediently perform them, but on this one morning during the prayer, I had been attempting, eyes closed, to point with my forefinger at my girlfriend Carol a few rows away. The idea was, when I opened my eyes I would see how closely my pointing finger had been aimed at the object of my adoration. This was very wicked of me, I know, but I was a reckless child.
    However, what I was completely unprepared to see when I opened my eyes, was the glowering, outraged face of Miss Skidmore standing before me. She had observed my peculiar gesture, and had interpreted it as some devilish sort of blasphemy.
    "Let us see what Mr. Stouter has to say about this!" she intoned ominously, taking me roughly by the ear. With my face burning with shame and terror, she marched me down to the office.
    When we were standing before the Presence, she commanded, "Tell Mr. Stouter what you were doing!"
    I told him exactly what I had done, and his face took on a look of serious concern. But the concern was mingled with puzzlement. To my secret relief, I could see that he didn't share Miss Skidmore's high degree of indignation over my behavior, but it was also obvious that he had to support her for the sake of discipline. So he did his best to give me a speech; I must understand that I must never do such a thing again, etc.; then he dismissed me back to class. He and I understood each other better than Miss Skidmore ever suspected.
    So, considering my liking and respect for Mr. Stouter, one can assume that I would never do such a thing as mischievous as putting itching powder on his chair. But even so, I did exactly that, and here is how it happened.
    It was the following year, third grade. There was a certain kid in my class who had the unfortunate gift of being the one who always gets picked on by the class brats. So naturally, he's the one I picked on to test a bag of itching powder that I had recently acquired. I was too shy of the stuff to test it on myself; what kind of a dope would do that?
    So, before class one day, I sprinkled a liberal amount of itching powder on the chair of my classmate Eric, and I sat in my own seat to watch and wait. Unfortunately, of all days, this was the one on which Eric did not show up for school, and his chair remained vacant. Then, about 15 minutes after class started, Miss Lane announced that Mr. Stouter would be visiting our class for awhile to observe us, and we were all to be on our best behavior while he was here.
    Presently Mr Stouter arrived, beamed his smile of greeting upon the class, and of all confounded peculiar coincidences, he chose Eric's desk to sit at, among the several vacant ones in the back of the room.
    In helpless dread, I watched as his posterior settled into the anointed seat. After a short while, he began to shift uneasily in the chair, and his expression became somewhat preoccupied. OK, so the stuff seems to work, but this was not good. I could hardly bear to look at him, between guilt, fear and remorse; mostly fear.  I did manage a few covert glances, and it was obvious that he was becoming increasingly uncomfortable, trying not to twitch.
    But being the deep old file that I am, I gave no hint that I was aware of anything unusual going on. Miss Lane was perhaps a bit surprised when Mr. Stouter's visit ended up being shorter than she had expected; however, he soon rose from his seat, gave us a brief smile, and briskly took his leave.
    All of us noticed that Mr. Stouter hadn't said much on this special occasion, which people found puzzling, even though it did seem that he had approved of our general conduct. In any case, Miss Lane had no reason to find fault with my best behavior on this day; to her, I had done nothing but reflect credit on her class.

Uber-Biker -the spandex tribe

     Do I display garish, bright logos emblazoned across my fashionable biking apparel when I go riding? Not so much.
    For one thing, the bike I ride is an ancient 3 speed English racer, the same bike my Grandpa bought me when I was 14 years old. Forty five years later in 2011, I still ride it with pleasure almost every day. It's on its second set of wheel bearings, third chain, and second rear sprocket; the first sprocket having had its teeth worn  down into little thin curved-over spikes, from the endless miles I've put on the bike since I was a kid. The original steel wheel rims were scored and dented from numerous mishaps with a curb or pothole, and then from banging on it with a hammer to get the creases back out.
    I've had a few spectacular wipeouts on that bike. Once, I was racing to beat a yellow light at an intersection, and bearing down on the petals. The road at that point crossed a set of railroad tracks at an oblique angle, and as I flew through the intersection in front of the waiting cars, the front wheel of the bike got caught in the recessed groove of the railroad track, yanking the wheel sideways and jerking it out from under me. I was propelled over the handlebars at high speed. Amazingly, I never lost my balance; I landed on my sneakered feet running, aware of the bike behind me crashing end over end in the road. I felt the pain of that, even as I was amazed to not be hurting myself. I wheeled around running, retrieved the bike out of the intersection as the light was changing, and hopped on. The people in the waiting cars had a perfect view of the whole thing. As I scooped up the bike and rode on, I caught the eye of the driver in the first car; his eyes were stretched in amazement. I waved and shouted as I rode off, "It's hell on the bike, though."  The bike was still rideable, but the wheel was crazed, and it's a good thing I didn't have far to go.
    I worked in a bike shop that summer; and there I learned how to lace up a wheel. After the accident, I bought light alloy rims, and I laced the new rims on to the original hubs. When you are tightening up the spokes on a new wheel, you can tune them by plucking, and tightening the spokes until they all ring about the same note; then you make fine adjustments to one side or the other as you turn the wheel, until it runs true as a rock. After rebuilding the wheels, I sadly discarded the battered old steel rims; they had served their time well. My bike was now a real hotrod, lighter, with brakes that worked smoothly again without all that chattering over dents. I also replaced he chain and sprocket, and pedaling was whisper-quiet. Everything else was well maintained and lubricated; I'd put on new cables; hammered out the fender dents and painted them, replaced the wheel bearings, and I had done many other custom touches too numerous to mention. That bike was as good as a bike gets. It was my first bike and I still love it.
    During that bike-shop summer, my mentor at the shop had spent a small fortune on a French 10-speed racing bike, a LeJune, that you could lift up with one finger. He was as proud as Lucifer of that bike, and rightly so I guess. But one day, we had an impromptu sprinting race, me on my 3-speed, and I beat his fancy LeJune by a nose.  His dismay was apparently so great that when I attempted to gloat about the event to some friends a few days later, he actually claimed he didn't remember it.
    I still own the same bike, in spirit at least, that I've maintained, ridden and loved all these years. To be perfectly accurate, it's not the same piece of metal, because the actual machine in all its cherry perfection and glory, got stolen from my house when I was in my forties and living in the city. Drunken kids stole it one New Year's eve, and probably rode it for an hour and ditched it somewhere on the street, where it was probably trashed and carted away. I still scan every bike rack I see when I'm in the city, hoping by a miracle to find my cherished old machine again. 
    But soon after the bike was tragically stolen, I was given an old 3-speed; a junker, but the identical make, model and year (1965) of my lost one, in almost every detail. The bike I was given was in bad shape, but it ran, so I just put on new tires, lubed it, and used it like that for a few years. Eventually, I did an extensive restoration job on it; the money I spent on parts alone would have bought a whole new modern bike. As a matter of fact, when I was buying and ordering all the parts I needed, the man at the bike shop was a bit hesitant, and he kindly tried to dissuade me from trying to make a new clunker out of an old clunker. But I explained the situation, and then he understood; then he helped me willingly. So I fixed up everything the bike needed, including lacing on new alloy rims just as I had done the first time, so when I was done it was just as good as my original. The continuity is unbroken, so to speak, and I call it the same bike my Grandpa bought me.
    So: the Uber-Bikers: just recently I was coming home from a ride, and I pulled up to a stop sign where I had to wait while a pack of about 12 spandex-clad bicyclers whooshed by. They all had matching body suits in clashing primary colors, and teardrop-shaped helmets; the helmets are presumably designed to give an extra one-half gram of thrust, by way of decreased wind resistance. As they rapidly approached me, their faces were immobile, inscrutable behind silver-rimmed sunglasses, and their glance didn't deviate an inch to acknowledge my bluejeans, flannel shirt, and headgear of faded baseball cap, as I waited at the stop sign.  
    After they passed, I pulled out and cranked it until I was just behind the last man in the pack, since I was going in that direction. I'm not so good for a long haul at that speed, but I'm good for a sprint, so I kept up behind them as we barreled along, my old English racer and blue-jeaned figure like a decrepit old caboose on a bullet train. I don't know what they thought of it, whichever of them even noticed, but I found it to be an interesting situation as I kept the hammer down and stayed close behind the last man.
    Presently, I noticed the lead man make a signal to the man just behind him in line. He dropped his left arm down, forefinger motioning down and inwards: point-point. The signal got passed back in line, each to the next man as they raced along: Point-point, point-point. As I got up to it, I saw that the signal was meant to indicate a storm-drain grating in the road, and to watch out for it as you passed. The signal came to the last man, the one directly in front of me.
    Until now, he had given no indication that he was aware of my presence speeding along behind him. But as the signal reached him, he dropped his left arm down and made the signal to me; point-point: watch out. In an instant, my heart swelled with pride and pleasure. The lone wolf, the black sheep, has been accepted into the pack! Suddenly the clashing primary colors on the spandex of the riders up ahead didn't seem so jarring; these were my colors too; this is my tribe! They've accepted me!  I pumped along behind the pack, my faithful machine running smoothly and solidly under me.
    All too soon we arrived at my destination, the driveway to my house, and I peeled off from the pack, with a grateful wave to the rapidly receding backs.

Celine and the Bird

    In a house in the forest lives the witch Celine;
    Her hair it is yellow and her eyes are green,
    And she can see without being seen;
    Mysterious witch Celine   

    Celine wove a spell in the full moon's light,
    To erase her form from mortal sight.
    Now she moves unseen when the sun is bright;
    And like a ghost at night.

    A little bird lives in a willow tree.
    Where Celine goes, there goes he.
    He can fly but he's not free;
    Where she is, he must be.

    He flutters o'er the spring in the morning light
    Where Celine doth bathe, so lily white.
    And he, by her window in shades of night,
    Sees her star-glazed eyes so bright.

    For he alone of all, can see
    Her shapely form, her rare beauty;
    And she sees all, save only he;
    He's the one thing she can't see.

    The bird was a man who loved her deep;
    Her troth she pledged but could not keep;
    Thus cursed him evermore to weep
    For the faithless witch Celine.

    And now in feathered shape he flies,
    He must attend her 'till he dies;
    While she for her part never cries,
    But roams the earth, unseen.

    Watching all, but touching not;
    Longing for she knows not what;
    Feeling neither cold nor hot,
    She moves as in a dream;
    Unhappy witch, Celine.

The Bony Express

In the dark of the night when the living are still,
And your rest is disturbed by a sudden chill
When you hear in the distance a moan of distress,
Then you'll know it's the hour of the Bony Express.

You hold in your breath as you strain for the sound
Of the clackety wheels and the shake of the ground;
Then you hear it again like an icy caress:
It's the whistling wail of the Bony Express.

By the glimmering light see each rider within,
With his empty sockets and fleshless grin;
To what dark destination is anyone's guess
They go reeling along on the Bony Express.

In the dark of the night when the shadows are deep,
And you pray for the Sandman to send you sleep,
You might also pray for the Lord to bless
All the restless sinners who never confess
As they rattle and roll to their final address
At the End of the Line, on the Bony Express.

Troll Woods

    "Trolls aren't real, Uncle Leonard. You're making that up."
    Thus spoke my nephew Uriel, with all the assurance and authority that a very smart 7-year-old can put into his voice. But as he said it, he cast an inquiring glance at his father, which I noticed with secret amusement. We were biking down a woodsy path which I knew well, and which I had always named Troll Woods to my kids when they were little. I would always say things like, "We shouldn't tarry in this place too long, for sunset is not far off. You know, that's when the trolls start to get active. Those big stones over there: those are trolls that got caught when the sun was rising, luckily for us."
    It always made the ride more interesting.
    When my wife was along, these stories would never work too well. She would start to fume with indignation, and I would have to leave off what she considered my fantasies, until another time. But in this instance when I was retelling these stories to my nephew Uriel, to my surprise, his father Steven had a much better sense of play than his sister. He responded to Uriel's questioning glance by saying, "Well, we don't really know for certain what may be out here. We'd better keep our eyes open."
    This remark heightened the tension as we rode our bikes down the path, as the sun was starting to sink in a red glow to the west. But it was just enough tension for us to experience an agreeable sense of adventure, without the annoying disadvantage of having any real danger.
    I could be confident of this, since I was familiar with the path; I knew that if we were brisk, we would certainly be out of there before sunset.

A Gratifying Scream

                       
    The flickering orange flames outlined the round blackness of the iron kettle, as it simmered quietly on its hook in the brick hearth. The room was dim, and the faces of the people could be seen gleaming redly in the glow of the fire, and of the few candles on the mantle and wooden table. We were telling each other Halloween stories.
    Among those assembled were two teenage girls. They were susceptible to being spooked; reluctant to listen to mystic tales, yet eager as well. It was my turn to relate a story, and the girls gripped each other nervously as I began. They grew progressively more tense as the story developed, at times giving each other uneasy looks in the firelight.
    As I finished the story, right at the last word I was startled by a loud scream, piercing and drawn-out, coming from the two girls; they were hugging each other in fear, with their wide eyes fixed on me. I don't think I've ever had a more satisfactory response to a dramatic narrative.
    I can't hope for such a reaction from everybody, but perhaps you, dear reader, will enjoy this tale as well, in your own way. It is a traditional New England folk tale, retold from memory in my own words.

Captain Goodwin and Goodwife Miller -
    One night, very late, Goody Miller was making her way home through the foggy streets of her sleeping village. The unusual circumstance of the goodwife being on the dark street at that hour, approaching midnight, was that she was returning from a sick call to an ailing neighbor, and she was desiring now to return to the comfort of her own dwelling.
    Walking silently through the fog, she could dimly make out the looming shapes of the buildings on either side, and presently she came to the open path through the common, and proceeded across it. Just at that time, a thinning eddy in the fog revealed to her a figure in the moonlight, coming toward her on the path from the other side. The figure had no doubt seen her as well, and she had not much choice other than to proceed forward, though somewhat uneasily.
    As the two walkers met in the open common, Goody Miller recognized with considerable relief that the figure was the familiar person of Captain Goodwin, a prominent citizen of the village.
    She stopped and made her curtsey. "Good evening, Captain Goodwin."
    He raised his hat. "Good evening to you, Goodwife Miller. I trust all is well with you this night?"
    "Yes sir, I thank you." He would have proceeded onward, but she hesitated for a moment, looking at him uncertainly, and so he paused. Then she said, "Begging your pardon, sir, but allow me to say that the town has been somewhat concerned on your behalf, these last several days. Your unexpected disappearance has had people fearing that you had met with some misfortune or accident. Forgive me if I seem impertinent."
    "Not at all, not at all, goodwife. As you can see, I am quite well, and I thank you for your kind, but unnecessary, concern." He made as if to continue on his way, but paused once again, as she seemed to have something more to say.
    "Forgive me again, Captain Goodwin, but a very curious and dreadful thing has occurred in the village, which I feel I should make you aware of, since you have been away." He gazed at her without speaking, and she continued, "The body of a drowned man was discovered washed up on the strand in the harbor, just this very evening at sunset. Everybody agreed that the figure of the drowned man looked very much like you. With all respect, sir."
    "The figure looked like me, you say? What of its clothing? Was it wearing a blue jacket with brass buttons, like this one that I wear?"
    "Yes, sir, he was wearing a blue jacket, just exactly like the one you are wearing."
    "Well, was he wearing brown britches, buckled at the knee, like these?"
    "Yes sir, very much like those."
    "Did he have on a red waistcoat under his jacket, like this one?"
    "Yes sir, in fact, he did."
    "Well, then, what about his boots? Was he wearing thigh-boots, turned down?"
    "No sir, I believe not. I believe he was wearing half-boots."
    "Not thigh-boots, turned down?"
    "No sir, I believe not."
    "Couldn't have been me, then! Good evening to you, Goodwife Miller." He touched his hat, and moved on.
    "Good evening... Captain Goodwin." She continued briskly on her way, somewhat chilled and considerably uneasy in her mind, until she reached the security of her own doorstep.
    The next morning at sunrise, the people of the village assembled near the strand in the place where the body of the drowned man had been laid out overnight, and they prepared to conduct it to the burial ground for a proper funeral. Goodwife Miller was present, and upon observing the figure of the man lying there, she perceived that she had been mistaken.
    The drowned man was, in fact, wearing thigh-boots, turned down.

Phantom

    I stumbled through a gloaming wood
    As evening settled down,
    And finally nodded as I stood,
    While shades of night drew 'round.

    And so I sank beneath the spell,
    As shadows o'er me crept;
    And visions, ghast and terrible,
    Appalled me as I slept.

    'Tis curious how one cries aloud,
    Not knowing he doth sleep;
    Tormented by a phantom crowd
    His mind alone doth keep.

    Or are these grimly phantoms real,
    That visit us by night?
    Invisible to waking eyes,
    Yet seen by darkling sight.

Spared By Nan -not a typical Irish bed and breakfast

    "Let me see the lads."
    Nan was craning her eyes over my shoulder to try to get a look at my boys, who were waiting in the car behind me.
    I was standing on Nan's front stoop, after having rung the bell and then introduced myself to her stern countenance, with the words, "I'm Mr. Solomon. We are the family who called you earlier, to stay at your bed and breakfast tonight."
    "How many are ye?"
    "Myself and my wife, and our two boys."
    But Nan had to get a good squint at the lads before she would let us in.
    So I called the boys over, and duly paraded them before Nan's scowling face, where they stood the scrutiny tolerably well. Then Nan led us in to the stark interior of her dwelling, and she showed us to our musty, threadbare rooms.
     Our reception was not precisely hostile, but neither was it welcoming, and we stood huddled in the cold room all looking at each other uneasily.
    "Should we stay here?" asked Lauren. She didn't exactly trust the situation, or the way Nan had sized up our boys.
    "It would be pretty awkward not to, at this point," I reasoned.
    "Maybe that lady at the store knew something," put in Mathew. That was more than Lauren wanted to hear just then.
    "We'll be fine," I said. "Let's go back to the store and get something for dinner."
    We got into the car and drove back towards the village; none of us feeling exactly easy. Finally I voiced the unspoken thought that was in all our minds.
    "She really is a witch, you know." The boys probably found that remark funnier than Lauren did, for she immediately desired me to stop saying that.
     When we had arrived at the village earlier that day, we had been to the little general store before we went out to see Nan's place. Pretty much everyone we met while we were in Ireland expressed a warmth and friendliness, and the storekeeper here was no exception. We had chatted for a bit, and told her that we were touring the country, staying in bed and breakfast places along the way. She had asked us where we were staying that night, and I had told her, "Over at Nan's place, out on Route ___."
     Suddenly, everything had gotten very quiet. The few people in the store stood still, and there was no response at all to my remark except a studied vacancy on the part of everyone within earshot. This was a curious sign, we had all thought. So it was with some foreboding that we had made our way out to meet Nan, even before we had seen the place.
    Now that was over with, and we were back in the car, returning to the little store in the village. When we got back there we were a little shy of speaking to anyone, but we bought some cold cuts and bread, and we had a nice meal on a picnic table under some trees: an idyllic spot in the fine evening. Nobody mentioned Nan, but eventually it was time to go; it was getting dark, and even I was getting a little apprehensive. Why had everyone gone so quiet at the store?
    But back we went to the now silent house; Nan was not to be seen, and Lauren and I got the boys situated in their room. Then we reluctantly left them to go to our own room. I was making no jokes about witches at this point.
    But as it turned out, this was to be another perfectly daring adventure, ruined by the lack of any real danger. Apparently we hadn't antagonized Nan sufficiently, for she never used any evil spells on us the whole time we were there, and the worst thing we suffered was a cheerless night on a hard bed, and an almost laughably sparse breakfast the next morning.
     You can confidently expect that a bed and breakfast house in Ireland will be comfortable and bounteous, abounding in fresh fruit, strong tea and coffee, local cream in a charming little pitcher, toasted soda bread, yogurt, hot cereal, pots of jam, butter, honey. The hostess will bid you help yourself to all of this from the sideboard, and she will then ask, "And what would you like for breakfast?"  That would mean, "How shall I cook your eggs, and what meats will you take?" We declined the meats, they being usually of some pork variety, and we certainly just said "No, thank you," to the black-and-white puddings; pork blood mingled with milk: possibly the most unkosher food on planet Earth, if you are of the Jewish persuasion. However, being civilized creatures, we of course never mentioned that, but we greatly enjoyed partaking of the other good things, which were often accompanied by a fine turf fire glowing on the hearth, and adding its scent to the room.
     Well, all this is exactly what Nan's place was not. From the look of things, she probably did not get much company, and she undoubtedly needed the money, but for what we got we certainly did not get a bargain price. The house was cheerless and without character, and Nan didn't seem to like people very much.
     At breakfast we were seated in front of a blaring TV, at a worn linoleum table provided with hot water and instant coffee, milk in its carton, and a sideboard that contained a number of boxes of cold cereal and nothing else.
    Jake looked over the selection, and chose some cocoa-puffed things, and he was about to pour some into his bowl.
    "Oh, I wouldn't recommend that one," cautioned Nan.
    "Why not?" asked Jake, poised with the box.
    "Oh, that one's been there quite a while," she replied.
    Jake's eye strayed back to the remaining selections, but I decided not to wait for any further, perhaps awkward, choices, and I asked, "Well, which one would you recommend?"
    The corn flakes is what she would recommend, so we all had some, washed down with stale instant coffee (Nan drank tea), and thin milk for the boys. I think I remember some rubbery eggs that went with it, but I do remember what was on the TV. The news was over and a travel program was on, featuring a Chinese pottery maker. The TV volume was too loud to allow conversation, but that's just as well, for there was precious little of that around this dismal table. We all watched the pottery maker on TV as we ate. He was showing how to make a tea strainer, and he was poking a thin stick through the bowl of wet clay, over and over to make little holes; "Keep pushing, keep pushing," the potter intoned as he worked, and the whole experience for me took on a dreamlike surrealism. Here we were in Ireland, the land of enchantment, intruding, as it were, in someone's kitchen, eating cornflakes out of a plastic bowl, and having a Chinese cultural experience. "Keep pushing, keep pushing..."
     So that was bed and breakfast at Nan's place: a mild enough experience; the lads caused no trouble after all, and neither did Nan. What she thought of us I don't know, but for me it was a memorable experience; it was just not the sort that you would find in the travel books.

    Now, if you scroll down to the next story, "Visiting Ireland", you can read more about what we saw there: the enchantment and the wonder.
    And sure if you don't leave a wee bit of a comment, how will I ever know that you read it, at all?

Visiting Ireland

     Sure and b'gorra, 'tis the glorious place of the world entirely. 
     We had a fine time, driving from village to village through the central western part of the country. We saw stone huts with slate roofs, stone huts with thatched roofs, and stone huts with no roof at all.  Where the hut has a roof, the yard will have a stack of turf for the hearth, and where there's no roof, you'll often see a cow munching grass by the gaping doorway. In some areas, you have to watch for sheep in the road, and once we had to wait while a long procession of cows crossed in front of us.  We drove through narrow cobblestone village streets that had hardly changed over the centuries, still with laughter spilling out from the open door of the local pub;  you will get a wary stare as you walk up, but then a sweet warm smile of welcome, after you nod hello.
    When we told our name, Solomon, we would get nods of interest and respect.  " 'Tis a very good name, Solomon."  Interestingly, no one in Ireland mistook our name for Sullivan, which happens with amusing frequency here in the U.S.  Plus, I think we had the distinction of being the only American tourists in the entire country, to have no Irish relatives that we were looking for. 
    The country fulfilled all my fondest dreams. What I was most eager to see were the medieval ruins, and they are everywhere. Driving along a narrow country road, you will often come to a break in the hedgerow and see, outlined against the sky across a cow pasture, the lonely remains of an ancient stone keep. Many of these are 800 or 1000 years old, and some are still in such good condition that one can ascend the twisting stone stairways, and emerge into the vaulted chambers high above. When these structures were built, in the Middle Ages, Ireland consisted of a patchwork of petty kingdoms, each clan securing itself as best it could inside wooden or stone fortifications. The most powerful clans could afford to build these elaborate keeps, or castles.
     During one rainy day drive, we stopped along a narrow lane by a pasture gate, and I went running across the rain-swept field to explore one of these ancient stone keeps. It was wildly romantic: huge gnarled stalks of ivy twining among the broken stones at the bottom of the tower, and the green crown of the vines enshrouding the upper portion of the ruin high above. The approach to the base of the tower was uneven and treacherous: an ascent through massive chunks of broken stonework that had fallen from above, all mossy and slippery from the rain. This tower was probably built somewhere around the 12th century, and the intact Gothic arch of the doorway showed beautiful workmanship in the carved stones that framed it. I made my way through the arch, balancing on a ledge inside the cavernous crumbling interior. Looking up, I could see the dangling remains of a circular stone stairway, the lowest of its steps poised directly overhead about thirty feet up, and projecting from the wall like teeth. A tantalizing view of chambers and passageways was visible in the structure overhead, with patches of sky shining through the gloom from slit windows and pointed arches high above.
     For 800 years, the ponderous stone monolith had stood, the careful work of industrious and powerful hands long ago, and it was now slowly returning to the earth. During its first few centuries, that tower house had undoubtedly been the focus of much poignant human drama; of war, and also of the more tender passions. Although all of that was long, long in the past, the place still retained the power to stir my heart with powerful emotions. Was it my own imagination, or did tenacious spirits still keep vigil there, probing my trespassing soul with the menacing query: Friend or Foe?

    Walking back through the wind-blown rain, looking out for a good place through the barbed-wire-lined hedgerow to take a short cut out of the pasture, I was suddenly aware of the sound of hooves behind me. I looked back to see 10 or 12 young bulls trotting briskly towards me, looking very businesslike. They stopped short, about ten feet away, staring intently. One bull, larger than the rest, galloped around from the back of the herd and came straight for me. I instantly turned back towards the hedgerow, thinking, "This is a good place!" and I plunged between the barbed-wire strands, into and through the briars and brambles to the road beyond, luckily leaving only a small amount of cloth and skin behind me. Then I became quite indignant, with my torn, muddy pants, and I began baiting the bulls, shouting and throwing handfuls of pebbles. They shied at first, but then stood firm, staring. "Come back across, and say that!" they told me.

     Another time I got to climb around in a very similar tower keep, that was in better condition. This one stood behind a farmhouse, and the bottom part was in present use as a barn, while the upper stories seemed completely abandoned. The whole structure was perhaps one hundred feet tall, the footprint being about as big as a large farmhouse. The lower parts of the stone walls had the typical narrow slit windows for defense, and inside, there were pointed Gothic arches for doorways between the chambers. A very steep long staircase built inside the thickness of the wall took me upward. The stone steps were rounded off, broken and perilous, and thick with pigeon droppings and the dust of ages. Coming to a landing two stories up, I could see across the cavernous interior of the keep. Away on the opposite side there was a large fireplace high up in the wall, above where the original wooden floor had long since disintegrated.
    Vaulting overhead, three stories above the dirt floor below with its stacks of hay, enclosing the cavernous interior space was a vaulted roof of stone, still intact. I walked along a ledge to one corner of the vast chamber, where a small pointed archway led into a small chamber, and from there a spiral stone stairway ascended to the levels further up. Several times as I turned a corner or came out of a passageway, startled pigeons would erupt from nooks and crevices where they roosted. At the end of one passage, I came to a dark  windowless chamber with a gaping hole where the stones of the floor had fallen away; the crumbled edge gave a view to the floor of another chamber 30 feet below. In certain parts of this labyrinthine structure, there was light enough to see by, coming from slit windows penetrating to the outside, but in some places, my pocket flashlight was very useful.
    I continued up, and emerged above the vaulted roof of the main chamber. The top two stories of the structure were partially crumbled, and exposed to the sky; everything here was overgrown with grass, vines and small trees. Originally, there would have been a wooden roof over this section, and wooden floors in it as well.  A last spiral staircase in a turret took me to the top of the crumbling wall itself, like a small forested mountaintop. I didn't dare take more than a few cautious steps out of the arched opening from the staircase; just far enough to gaze with wonder out over the enchanted landscape far below.

    On another day, son Jake and I climbed part way up a boggy, rocky mountain in Connemara, which is a very wild and remote area with boulder fields, mountains and bogs. It is a place where peat, or turf, is mined; it is cut out in blocks from square pits in the peat bogs, and the blocks are piled in stacks to dry; they are used as fuel in hearths and stoves.
    On this day, rain was threatening, and a dark grey forbidding cloud engulfed the top of our mountain. As we climbed, we couldn't avoid soaking our feet, as we threaded our way from tussock to tussock between the boggier places, and jumped over the numerous rills of water that trickled down between rocks. As we went up, sheep were skipping out of our path, and sometimes we would come on to a dome of rock, and then we'd turn and view the wild beauty of the panorama expanding below.
    We found a patch where numerous sundew plants were growing. These are carnivorous plants, of a glowing red orange color; they consist of a sunburst of radiating stems; each stem has a ball at the tip, and each ball has whiskers, which are tipped with a glob of sweet sticky nectar. Flies are attracted by the sweet nectar, and when one lands on the ball, the whiskers all bend around to trap the fly, which eventually rots there, while the plant absorbs the fly's juices.
     Jake and I hunched over one of these sundew plants, and I was attempting to tickle up its whiskers with a blade of grass to make it react. The plant wouldn't react, possibly because the grass blade had the wrong "smell", but in any case we couldn't find the plant's tickle spot. As we were hunched over there, we felt a soft breath of rain wafting down, and looking up we were alarmed to see the dark gray cloud lowering menacingly down towards us. Suddenly the rain washed over us in earnest, and we began wildly splashing and jumping back down the mountain, looking fearfully over our shoulders at the dark cloud moving down to engulf us.
     After a few minutes of running down, the rain was lightening up, and we perceived that the cloud was moving back up to the top of the mountain. Jake observed that somehow we seemed to have touched the tickle spot of the mountain, angering it. But we had managed to outrun its fury, we had escaped. We would not lie rotting in the bog, while the mountain absorbed our juices.
    The rain stopped, and we walked the rest of the way down in sunshine.

     On another day, we found a most beautiful, dark mystical forest of hemlocks, all festooned and draped with curtains of Spanish moss, and with a thick springy carpet of moss underfoot. We entered the dim green depths of the forest into an enchanted realm where sounds were muted; stepping carefully and politely, peering around the craggy trunks of trees, and listening; for surely the Leprechaun dwelt beneath these shades?
    He never appeared however, in spite of my sly efforts at spying him from the corners of my eyes; he merely watched us in silence from his hidden bower, and swore in his sleeve; not on this day would he reveal his secrets to such as us.

    We did some hiking in the Burren, a rocky place which is the site of many stone age ring forts, standing stones, burial mounds and rock-slab tombs, called dolmens, and an underground tunnel-tomb with stone-slab walls and roof; you can crawl into it, if you've got a taste to be in such dusty creepy passages.  Crawl I did, the fascination and horror of the earth over me.
    The structures in this place are older than the medieval castle ruins by a few thousand years; they predate the Christian era. These artifacts give testimony of the unbroken span of ages that human souls have animated this ancient land.

    We explored the medieval town of Kilkenney, with its round tower built around the year 850. (It stands directly adjacent to a grand cathedral that was built next to the round tower 400 years later, in the 1200's. The cathedral at Kilkenney is as magnificent as anything you'll see in Europe, from the elaborate stone filigrees inside its soaring dome, to the stained glass of the high arched windows. The cathedral has been in continuous use since it was built.)
    Visitors who wish to ascend the tower, climb up steep wooden stairs with landings, built inside the tower to replace the original stone steps. The original steps were built right into the wall, spiraling upward; they were only a foot wide with no railings, and a sheer drop off the edge down into the tower. One slip meant certain death if you were up far enough. This was much too perilous an arrangement for tourists, and these steps were dismantled 30 years ago to be replaced by the wooden stairs.
    The caretaker of the tower, who gave us admission, was an interesting old character. He had been up and down those original steps many times when he had been a boy, he told us, and he enjoyed seeing my eyes widen as he described it.
    At the top of the tower, the last five original steps have been left in place so you can see what they were like. You view these original steps, and then climb them, from the safety of a sturdy wooden landing. If you fall off the steps now, you only go down about six feet onto the landing, instead of 120 feet to the bottom.
     I told the man that we were touring his beautiful country, and enjoying it very much.  He advised me with a grin, not to neglect to "Have a couple o' points."  [pints]
    Well, we did do that. How can you visit Ireland and not have a couple o' points? We met many fine people, heard much good music in the pubs, and sure it's the ache in my heart there'll be, until the happy day that I can return.

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    Och;  if you've done with that story, why wouldn't you scroll down to the "Magic Button", now?
Do you believe in it?