Views from the Corner

People so want to believe. UFO'S, Bigfoot, ghosts, Nessie, all kinds of paranormal activity, more felt than seen out of the corner of our collective eye. Conspiracy theories are spawned by the same lust, something to allow us flights of fancy beyond our own matter-of-fact existence. The Kennedy assassination, a fake moon landing, 9-11. We seek it out of escapist need, like drugs and alcohol or a nice Pentecostal Church. Carry me away from here, get me high on the possibilities. When we run with a pack of the like-minded, we may never have to face the fact that the emperor has no clothes and Santa isn't real.

Florida Road Trip

Driving South on US1 yesterday, heading down to Bunnell for an appointment, we expected to see “Old Florida” along the way, but it had been erased. Up until recently, US1 was a crumbling secondary road, long neglected by folks in a rush to get to somewhere other than here. They're speeding up and down I95 now. 

In our hurry up culture there's little time to slow down for a look at a time eroded farmhouse with surrounding scrap piles that had once been outbuildings. Gone are the remnants of country stores, imploded and covered in a blanket of Kudzu. Even the alternate route 1 South had been updated. No rusted gas pumps dying slowly in front of abandoned stations plastered with tin urging travelers to chew Red Man tobacco. Now it's four lanes separated by a landscaped median and flanked by twin bike paths, all of it like a highway golf course, pristine and sterile, stretching out to the horizon. 

Heat snakes still danced up from the hot asphalt. That hadn't changed.

Bunnell itself has plenty of character though. It's liberally sprinkled with churches for the born again and bars for those who only see the light on Sunday. Pawn and gun shops compete for space with junkyards that call themselves auto body shops. 

Ruth called and told me of a dog she so wanted to rescue, the questionable product of a bitch impregnated by her son and the resulting bitch by her own brother. The pup had severe problems. Several locals managed to drag themselves past our front bumper when we stopped at the light in the center of town, themselves the seeming products of dark family relations. I told her that I understood her hesitancy to adopt.

When our appointment was over, we asked Siri to find some seafood, a good lunch spot. She sent us 20 miles due East where the Atlantic demands that traffic turn North or South. We wound up sitting in a booth at The Flagler Fish Company. Soothed by a Pandora station spinning familiar folk tunes, sharing a perfect Cesar Salad. Glasses of real sweet tea with lots of lemon were in a cold sweat, drenching napkins that now doubled as sponges on our pitted wood table. Asiago potatoes accompanied Lobster rolls stuffed with buttery chunks of warm flesh that only moments before had been the claws and tail of a dark green crustacean sleeping in a shaded corner of the lobster tank pressed up against a wall opposite our table. Although I find most restaurants disappointing, there are those rare times when the atmosphere combines with great service and food that is exactly right. This was one of those times. 

Sitting reflectively after we cleaned our plates, Carla covered my hand with hers, like a blanket from the chill. We shared a wordless smile, an appreciation for the moment, and for the good fortune of our lives themselves... as James Taylor sang a song about Mexico.

Home School Kids...

Even back when Ruth and Hannah first started to home school, there were many different curricula to choose from. But mostly Carla just took the kids everywhere, showed them everything, and let them ask 1,000 questions. She would take them to various businesses and ask the owner to show them what he does, and how. People generally loved to help. Carla had the kids handle the money in a check-out line and know what the change should be. She mentored them. But there was almost never a time when she said: “OK, it's 3PM, time to study math” no such structure. Yes, the state did monitor and test periodically. No, they didn't “have to” take the GED, but both aced it on their own. In fact, Ruth tested in the top 1% in the entire country for language skills. Partially, that is due to the fact that when Carla first raised the idea of homeschooling to me, my only issue was that they become good readers and writers. I figured from there they had the tools to do anything they choose to do. We intentionally had no TV when they were growing up other than a VCR to watch tapes from the library, so they read to entertain themselves and got very creative with arts & crafts for the same reason. Carla spent many hours in the early years nestled in a booth with the girls at “Friendly's Ice Cream Parlor” sharing book reading duties, and on the floor of the local “Goodwill Store” reading through books there as well. Most people were delighted to have a young mother and her two little girls engaged in those activities in their store, even when it was on the floor in a corner of the room. As far as socialization goes, there was plenty of that for the girls as they grew. Local home school groups organized various activities and there were many clubs and opportunities aside from simply spending time with friends. Living in the country, we were big on visiting family farms, going to dairy farms to collect eggs from the hen house...many activities more enjoyable than the enforced boredom of a study hall...

For me personally, I got the best education from my parents, both well educated, articulate people. So I believed the kids mostly did the same with us. Are there gaps? Sure. Ruth jokingly claims that she doesn't know how to read an analog clock. But then, I've never used the Latin or trigonometry I learned and would have been better off learning people skills, how to be a good husband and father, or how to build a raised garden. Of course, that's where reading comes in...

The whole world seems to be very locked in to the idea of the necessity of a “formal education” and I found that to mean an inordinate amount of “sit down and shut up” time...in public schools that are more about crowd control than learning, much like minimum security prisons.

I believe the very best rational for home schooling is the absence of peer pressure. The kids never felt the need to wear certain clothes, behave in a certain way, nor share the attitudes or assumptions of a peer group. That was huge. They both had the chance to figure out who they were, what they stood for in this world, before the winds of social conformity tried to blow them in one direction or another. By the time those winds finally had a chance to try to blow them around, both girls were already very self-confident individuals, well anchored, secure in their own paths. The determined winds of conformity never had a chance...

A Square Peg...

The question posed was about TV shows of the 1960's and early 70's, my teen and young adult years... who never missed what shows? Which shows were favorites and which were duds?

Overall, I just can't relate...

Growing up in America, I was certainly aware of, but not a fan of, mainstream TV, which was pretty much all of it. Mostly it made me feel disconnected, like someone who doesn't like ice cream. People would say: "I love that show! or such and such is so good!" and I was silently numb, feeling like the guy who is picked last for the baseball game that he doesn't want to play in anyway.

All through High School, I spent most of the evening hours in my bedroom looking through a microscope at a much smaller world and listening to AM radio. That made me happy and gave me a good excuse to avoid the TV room with my folks and Lawrence Welk. Sitting on my bed reading each volume of the 1956 World Book Encyclopedia over and over, trading barbs with my best friend two houses away over a telegraph system we put together, lines buzzing from window to tree to garage to tree and down into my friends window.

My real hot button? Long lazy summer days spent alone on several hundred acres of pristine Virginia woods at my Grandparents place, clearing new growth from the ruts of old stagecoach roads that permanently scared the land, superhighways to the West, now silent of their squeaking wheels and the labored breathing of large animals. I felt them there, the ghosts of the past, now buoyed by cool breezes under the high canopy of live Oaks, populated by choirs of birds...just us, exhilarated, celebratory, and yes, feeling very much connected.

That place was my church. God lived in those woods.

Swim Forrest, Swim!

My next door neighbor and I were sitting out back looking at the lake when three of our mutual friends showed up. I questioned aloud: "I wonder if anyone ever swam across it?" Well, one thing lead to another, one beer to the next, and before I knew it, he and I were in a swimming competition while our three friends stayed warm and dry on the bank. They jeered and yelled out nasty remarks about how we couldn't swim worth a damn and probably couldn't even catch a tadpole for lunch if our lives depended on it. Some friends they turned out to be.

Susie Evert No pictures of your swim across the lake Uncle Hugh Maverick Haller?

Hugh Maverick Haller Just envision a speed boat...

Susie Evert Yeah yeah! Faster than speed lighting! huh? LOL

Nick Patten did you make it across the lake? and by lake do you mean swimming pool? not to doubt your swimming prowess ...just asking

Hugh Maverick Haller It's more retention pond than lake, full of toxic runoff and alligators. But my new neighbor doesn't know that so I made sure that he won the coin toss and got a ten second lead. I didn't bother to see if he made it, mainly because I went back up to the deck. I knew there was only one beer left.

Hugh Maverick Haller I wouldn't get into that shitty water if you paid me.

Susie Evert Thats what I was thinking about how gross the lake must be and what about alligators? I'm so gullible!

Nick Patten the old 10 second lead get the new guy to jump into alligator infested toxic water trick heh? it's a classic....well done sir, well done

Hugh Maverick Haller In this picture the four of us were laughing as we watched his slime covered head moving away from us as fast as that man could swim.I don't know if that was a large stick or an alligator drifting his way.

Cyril Collins Spoken like a real Manatee

Dad...

My father had a massive heart attack when he was 64. Surviving that wake-up call, he uncharacteristically paid attention when the doctor told him to stop smoking, stop working and to take care of himself right now, or die. That kind of talk can get your attention, as it did for him. He quit his law practice in NYC, quit his three pack a day cigarette habit that turned the ends of his fingers brown, and moved away from New Jersey traffic to North Carolina coastline. For the next two years he learned how to fish the surf and walk a ten mile loop between two prominent piers every day. Although he did ramp it up again after that and was the driving force behind incorporation of the town of Pine Knoll Shores, serving as mayor for two terms, he stayed healthy. When death came knocking again at age 89, he was ready to answer the door, and did.

We never hugged or said: “I love you.” A handshake was what fathers and sons did back in those days, and that was OK. But sometimes little things matter the most and we both enjoyed sending each other bad limericks.

Dad wrote:

An amoeba from old Potawatomi,

Was beset with recurring dichotomy,

She split and she split,

And after a bit,

She observed: “There's a hell of a lot-o-me!”

I responded:

An old salt went fishing most days,

Catching fish in incredible ways,

The fish he was gleaning,

Were like ovens: self-cleaning!

And most days he caught just fillets!

A lazy old man form The Shores,

Wraps his dog round his neck while he snores,

Sitting up on the couch,

With a dog-induced slouch,

He feigns sleep to avoid all his chores!

In this increasingly disjointed world, while I pretend to be an adult in charge, I miss my Dad's stable, reassuring, wise council. And if he's out there, looking over my shoulder, I just want to say to him out loud so he hears me clearly: “I love you, Dad.”

Are You Happy?

If someone asked me: “Are you happy? Happy with your life right now and the path you took to get here?” My answer would have to be “yes”. But I never had a plan. I just started driving toward an unknown destination, taking exits that felt right even if they were left. What else can you do if you never know what you want to be when you grow up? Right now, at age 66, I still don't know. So I look at it like a Zen thing, it just is what it is and I just am what I am. And that's OK with me. Certainly I envied many of those along the way who knew, set a course and plotted out a map to where they thought they wanted to go. But even with those people, so many had to deal with roadblocks that took them in an entirely different direction. Life intervenes. I've long embraced the belief that things work out best for those who make the best of the way things work out. And no looking back with regret. Whatever could have happened, did. And now that I've traveled these many unplanned miles, I've come to a place of perspective. A big yardstick in our culture is money and certainly I'm a lot less wealthy than I had expected to be at my age. But that is balanced by my surprising lack of concern. My real wealth is in the many things that have nothing to do with money. I'm not known for being an expert in any field, I'm no guru of anything in particular. And yet, I'm a very successful person and I know it. That's what matters, that perspective. I didn't arrive at this spot on a map by design, I just bumbled into it as I lead a happy life, every mile along the way...happy because I choose to be...and that is a choice we can all make every day.