Keep the Coffee Comimg

The sound of rain woke me up. I listened for a short while then went back to sleep. The rain has since stopped, but the morning is damp, chilly. Everything is soaked.

Yesterday I finished planting the flowers I had bought. The deck now has 4 clay pots, 2 decorative pots and 8 over the rail flower boxes filled with herbs and flowers. I still need more flowers for the big clay pots I put on the deck trail. That’s for tomorrow. I cleaned out the metal trash can where I kept the seeds for the feeders. I haven’t hung the feeders since last year because the small branches where they had hung are gone, broken off, so I‘ll have to be creative. I do have a couple of ideas.

When I was a kid, we sometimes went to Boston for the day. We’d spend time on the Boston Common. I remember riding the Swan Boats. The boats are propelled by pedals, foot power, so the ride is quiet. I could hear birds. I watched swans gracefully swimming in the lagoon. I remember sitting on one of the benches near flower beds and having squirrels, aka the spawns of Satan, all round me begging for the peanuts my father had bought. They’d stand on their hind legs, paws out. I thought it was amazing they were so close. I was young. The Swan Boats haven’t changed in close to 150 years, neither have the squirrels.

The Peace Corps had Land Rovers, the sort that used to cross the Sahara in caravans of vehicles instead of camels. To me they meant adventures in out of the way places. I remember my first ride in a Range Rover. It was at the end of our mid-year conference. We had stayed at a hotel with cabins right on the ocean and down the coast from Accra. When one of the Peace Corps staff was going back to Accra, he offered to drive a few of us with him. I leaped at the chance. I was in a Land Rover in Africa. I could’ve been on a page of National Geographic.

The morning is a delight. It is bright and sunny and 76°. The breeze is from the north. The dogs are having their mornings naps. The house is quiet.

When I was a kid, I had no set bedtime in the summer. I watched TV and went to bed when I was tired, but before turning out the light, I’d read. I always had books. I usually bought a book a week with my 50 cent allowance and then filled in the rest of the week with library books. I always returned them early. I remember riding my bike to the library, and I remember the bouncing books in my wire bike basket.

I am a sort of transformer with a hand vacuum in place of my right hand. As I walk, the vacuum, held to floor level, sucks up clumps of Henry hair, but I’ve discovered, to my chagrin, those clumps are magical. They propagate. After I clean one room, they reappear in that room as I’m vacuuming the next. I could vacuum the entire day and still have clumps of dog hair all over the floor. They remind me of tumbleweeds.

I remember all the cigarette ads on TV. Doctors smoked Camels. Pall Malls got filters, but you could still buy the unfiltered. Both my parents smoked them though my mother switched brands years later. “Winston tastes good like a cigarette should.” Virginia Slims were only for women, tapered for a woman’s hand. “You’re come a long way baby.” Kool had menthol magic. Even Fred and Wilma smoked. On every commercial the cigarette was held by the first two fingers of the right hand. After exhaling, the smoker always smiled.

My father was the best corn and lobster eater I have even seen. He ate his corn with precision going across one row then down to the next with barely a pause. He was a human typewriter. He never left a kernel on the cob. I learned how to eat a lobster from my father. The first lesson was never to sit next to him. He spurted lobster juice. He showed us his steps for getting all the meat. First, pull off the tail and claws then crack, with your hands, the shell so the tail comes out intact. Next I had to use a cracker on the claws and knuckles. My father’s claw meat always came out intact. We learned how to eat the body. First was the tomalley, the green part. Next was the meat in the body. That took some looking. Last were the legs. Biting up the shell was the technique for those. At the end of eating a lobster only the shells should be left.

I have stuff to do. I cleaned part of the deck yesterday. Today I have to finish. I have to plant the flowers in the clay pots and clean the deck chairs and the table. The last deck work is ceremonial. It is the grand opening of the red deck umbrellas.