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“If you’ve seen one redwood tree, you’ve seen them all.”
October 17, 2011It’s raining slightly, but still it’s raining. The paper got it wrong. The prediction is for rain tomorrow so I don’t know if that means two more days of rain despite all the rain we had last week. I swear this is Mother Nature’s way of erasing all the memories of summer. She gives us nothing but dreary days, and we start to expect them. Fall becomes winter far too quickly.
Today I have to go to Boston where I haven’t been in a while, other than the airport. I used to go all the time, but I’ve become a country bumpkin. Now I gripe and complain when I have to drive to Hyannis, a trip taking about 15 minutes. I don’t know if it’s age, retirement or just being comfortable here at home and on the Cape. Once I get on the road, I’m okay with the travel, but it’s getting the incentive to move that takes time. Today I have a doctor’s appointment, just a regular one so I have no choice.
When I was a kid, any car trip of great length was pure agony. Three of us were crammed in the backseat of a car which had that big hump in the middle of the floor. The windows never let in enough air, and I was prone to car sickness. We elbowed each other and whined about space and who was violating our space. I couldn’t read in the car and we had nothing but looking at the scenery to keep our attention. We’d play state license bingo, twenty questions, and I spy with my little eye but interest was difficult to maintain. How much can you spy in the same car for hours? We seldom stopped. My dad believed that any trip anywhere could be made in a single day. He groaned about bathroom stops and lunch never took much time, always at a picnic bench with the lunch my mother had made.
The only trip I remember with sightseeing was the one to the White Mountains. We saw the Old Man of the Mountain, now a memory since his collapse, went up Mount Washington and toward the end of the day stopped to the Flume. It was late in the afternoon and we got the last bus of the day to the Flume which meant we had to walk back to the car. I remember how cold it felt on the top of Mount Washington and how the road seemed far too close to the edge. The old man did look like a face, but he didn’t impress us all that much. We were kids, and he was a rock. All I remember about the flume is a bunch of walkways and some waterfalls. I can still see the tarred road we dragged ourselves on to get back to the car. And, yup, we did all of that in one day.
“Nothing is worth reading that does not require an alert mind.”
October 16, 2011Somehow I lost my checkbook. I wrote a check this morning, took out the ATM card from that very checkbook at the bank, withdrew money and then went on my merry way. When I tried to put the ATM card back into the checkbook, it had disappeared. I drove back to the bank thinking somehow it fell out of the car. That was, at best, remote as I only opened the window. Just as I suspected, no checkbook . I went through my car. I found old mail I had dropped on the floor which must have slid under the seat, a quarter filled bottle of Gatorade my nephew left sometime in May, a check for valet parking and lots of dog hair but no checkbook. When I got home, I checked the drive and walkways, came inside and went through the table area where I had written the check and found nothing. I called the bank, and they put a hold on all checks. I am totally astonished at its having gone missing. I fear the check gremlins had been hiding in my car just waiting for this moment. It’s like the movie Gaslight. I am slowly being driven crazy. I can think of no way I dropped that checkbook, but I suppose I must have. Are those voices I hear?
Today is again a beautiful fall day with lots of sun. The temperature is in the 60’s. Even the house felt warm when I woke up. Last night we had high winds, and the ground is filled with leaves and clumps of pine, victims of that wind. It is still here but is much less ferocious and only periodic. I can see the backyard oak tree bending and swaying when the wind blows. The bird feeders are swaying.
I have been really lazy. Yesterday I did the casual wash up and brushed my teeth but didn’t bother to get dressed. A couple of things cut cuff dusted, but that was the extent of my industry. I finished my book, one with a plot so simple it did not in any way challenge my mind. Here is the plot in as few a number of words as possible: the government secretly tested a bio-weapon on Americans in an area in Detroit frequented by bad cops, drug dealers and prostitutes. The 1000 deaths were no great loss according to its inventor. It was, after all, Detroit. The disease had a built-in timer so it disappeared after 3 days and never traveled outside that infected area which had been sealed off by the bad guys, the US government.
Last night the Tigers lost. Detroit has been hard hit.
Heroes and Villains: The Beach Boys
October 15, 2011
“As you get older it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary.”
October 15, 2011This morning is fall in all its glory. The sky is a bright blue and the sun is shining. The air has a bit of a chill, and it’s sweatshirt weather. It is the loveliest of days.
Where have all the heroes gone? When I was a kid, they were easy to identify. Every Saturday morning I watched the Lone Ranger, Hopalong, Gene Autry, Will Bill Hickock and Roy Rogers. The bad guys never had a chance. All those cowboys had codes of behavior which didn’t seem silly or naive. None of us scoffed at the Lone Ranger when he said that all men are created equal and that everyone has within himself the power to make this a better world. At the end of every show there was a moral, and doing the right thing was the gist of it. Hopalong made honesty a badge of honor. Gene Autry never took advantage of anyone, even his enemy. Wild Bill reminded us to study hard. The code of the west was you always kept a promise, and I still always do. I won’t make a promise unless I know I can keep it. It is my word, my honor. I learned that when I was very young, and I learned it from television.
I am an optimist. I try to believe in the best of people even though that belief has been tested and strained time and time again, but I can’t give it up. I have to believe that people will do what’s right. I guess I’m still naive, but I prefer it to being pessimistic and hardened.
Some of my friends look at the world with a jaundiced eye. I feel sorry for them and for their loss. Hope is what gets me up in the morning. I hope it will be a good day; I hope that I might have a laugh or two, see a marvel or be dazzled by the night sky. I hope the world will be a better place than it was the day before. If that’s naive, please let me stay that way.
“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”
October 14, 2011The day is still, one of those damp days which seems to smother movement. It’s warm, not even a sweatshirt day. I heard the rain earlier this morning, but I just nestled and went back to sleep. I swear it got light for a bit, but I think the sun felt overwhelmed by all the clouds and went back inside to mull over its future.
You know I love the rain, but a succession of rainy days tends to get dreary, to make me a bit lethargic. Yesterday we did errands, including Gracie’s favorite spot, the dump, but today only the laundry awaits. Nothing exciting there. Maybe I should add dusting. Nope, that doesn’t do it either. I do have a book, but that seems too easy: lying on the couch and reading. I guess Gracie and I will venture out to see what awaits us in the world today. You never know what you’ll find.
If I were a character in a Stephen King novel, I’d find something during the venture which I, in retrospect, would wish I’d never found. It might be the store with the strange man behind the counter, a man dressed in a black suit and wearing a fedora who might even have an unlit cigar hanging out of the side of his mouth. His store is filled with what looks commonplace, but he’s really offering time or place or a wish he’d grant which I’d come to rue later, too late I might add. Festivals are common on the Cape this time of year. This weekend I can attend a scallop festival, an apple festival or harvest day at Bray Farm. It’s that last one which has the potential of Stephen King about it. A hay ride is always part of the day, and I’m thinking of scarecrows with hellish grins who move when you’re not looking or a trail leading to a place none of us recognize. There are chickens on the farm. I mean, really, what farm doesn’t have chickens. Chickens have beaks, and when a brood of hens join forces and attacks, none of us are safe. Oops, now I’m straying into Alfred Hitchcock territory. It’s the rain. It has my brain astir. My imagination is running amok. Where is my book? Gracie, the couch is mine!
“leafless trees dripping – autumn rain”
October 13, 2011Last night I fell asleep to the sound of rain and this morning I woke to it. When I went to get the papers, I was surprised at how warm the day felt. I expected that damp chill which seems to find your bones. The rain stopped for a bit but has started again, and I can watch it fall through the den window. Gracie’s just came in and her coat is all wet. The ground is strewn with leaves brought down by the wind and rain. It gives the yard the look of fall.
When I was a kid, I loved it when the street gutters were filled with leaves. We didn’t walk on the sidewalk. We preferred the gutter route. The brown leaves crinkled when you walked through them and some broke and split when you kicked them into the air. We’d send leaves and pieces of leaves all over the street. Sometimes we’d pick up handfuls of leaves and throw at each other, laughing the whole time. We’d spend the rest of the walk taking pieces of leaves out of our hair. We never did it going to school, only coming home.
Loving rainy days dates back to my childhood. I’d come home from school soaked by the walk through the rain then I’d usually change into my pajamas, no need for playclothes on a rainy day. During the rest of the afternoon, my brother would watch TV while my sisters played together. I’d go to my room and read. It was private time not easy to find in a small house with four kids. I always felt cozy, and I still think sitting inside on a rainy day with a good book is a cozy and warm way to spend an afternoon.
During the rainy season in Bolga, the storms were so magnificent I’d always watch. First the winds came, and they were so strong they bent tree tops almost to the ground. I’d hear thunder and sometimes even see the lightning. Then the rain would start. It never started small. The sound of the rain was a roar as if I were standing near a waterfall. The ground would run with rivers of water. If I were teaching, I’d have to stop as the sound on the tin roof was so deafening no one could be heard. That sound is still one of my favorites of all sounds, and I was lucky enough to hear it again on my trip. It rained twice when I was in Bolga, and I stood and watched just as I used to do so long ago. I was under an overhang, and I was safe and dry just as I was when I was a kid in my bedroom.
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