By Rick LaClaire

What better gift than a cactus? Okay, maybe a new car — or maybe even an old one. Or maybe just a toy car… Yeah, as a gift, cacti stink. And to think I once gave them.

I should have known better. My very first experience with a cactus was somewhat tragic. I was in high school and had a buddy named Dale. Dale had the biggest record collection of all my friends and free time was frequently spent in his tiny bedroom, spinning vinyl. “Listen to this,” he’d say, and drop the stylus on the latest platter by REO Speedwagon. Or Jethro Tull. Blue Öyster Cult, Cat Mother & the All Night Newsboys… You name it, he had it.

Dale painted his room black. He was the first guy I ever knew to do that. And, of course, black room? Black light — with a half-dozen of the coolest DayGlo posters you ever saw. It was cramped in there with all those records, but somehow, from somewhere, he had acquired a cactus.

It was bulbous and green, covered with soft white hair. Cacti didn’t happen in northern New York and I was intrigued. Like a fool, I had to touch it. That white stuff wasn’t hair.

It zapped me. An instant mixture of pain and itchiness spread across my fingers. I reacted by impulsively brushing away the offending hairs and as I did, each one broke off in my skin. My fingers began to swell as I continued scratching. What a strange, annoying sensation.

College was rife with cacti. There was even one that made you puke and get religion. But I’m not talking about that, I’m talking about a species even more prevalent in the early ’70s: the ubiquitous “Christmas Cactus,” a tiny reminder of the tropics marketed as “The Perfect Plant.”

Yep, they were cheap. Two or three bucks, tops. Of course two bucks in 1973 dollars was five gallons of hi-test or a pint of Imperial; four loaves of bread or two pounds of baloney (take your pick). It was also an hour’s minimum wage, and if you felt like pushing a broom or washing dishes for that length of time — all for the sake of a cactus — well, that was your prerogative. And, gosh-darn it, they were the perfect plant. The best way to treat a Christmas Cactus was to ignore it. If those aren’t handy instructions for a dormitory-bound sophomore with more important things on his mind (like girls, beer and, uh… girls) I don’t know what is. Your reward for this grueling regimen of non-cultivation? Flowers! Beautiful red ones, supposedly every Christmas.

But most Christmas Cacti had their own clock. Blooms came when they felt like it. Spring, fall, winter — it didn’t matter. One good thing about them was that the spines were short, quite visible, and scattered. There were just enough to tell you not to touch it, but too few to infect you (like that white-haired thing). They weren’t very attractive though, except for the flowers, and yes, it was possible to kill one. Cold would do it, as would over-watering. But only guys were “dumb enough to kill a cactus.” Most the girls I knew had healthy specimens.

One was Crazy Carol. She collected and cultivated cacti. Her dorm room was festooned with dozens of macramé-hanging terrariums. She often gave them away, but if you wanted something special you could pay (she was crazy, not stupid). I’d been seeing a girl for a couple months and Christmas was approaching. I thought one of Crazy Carol’s creations would fill the bill nicely. For seven dollars (a full tank of gas, a fifth of Wild Turkey, twenty-eight loaves of bread, or seven pounds of baloney — take your pick) I got the whole shebang: the glass globe, macramé hanger, soil, and an assortment of four tiny cacti. As usual with cacti, the instructions were simple: “Don’t open them. Don’t water them. Don’t drop them and by all means, don’t turn them upside down.” Crazy Carol also had advice for the care and feeding of Christmas Cacti: “Spit on them.”

As I said, this was my first Christmas with my Sweet Patootie, and she went hog-wild on me. A new shirt, a bottle of whiskey, a gift certificate to the local leather shop (I needed a belt), and a camera! She spent one hundred bucks, and here I was with my paltry cacti in a fishbowl. Well, at least it was boxed and wrapped. What’s the first thing my Sweet Patootie did with them? She turned them upside-down to undo the tape. Then she held them up and said, “Gee… Dirt?”

We fiddled with it as the years passed, salvaging a couple specimens, but that minor earthquake really upset the original arrangement. It was good luck though, because I wound up marrying this girl. She had a thing for house plants, and our first apartments were strewn with Wandering Jew, Arrowhead and Coleus, as well as the ubiquitous Christmas Cactus. It was always fun to hear visitors say, “Nice Coleus, and nice, uh… Dirt?” when they spied that macramé debacle. I don’t know what finally happened to it. We’ve moved so many times…

And finally, we moved to Florida. Florida is cactus heaven — or hell, depending on your tolerance for the plant. Our second home here was a brand-new mainland apartment in a not-so-nice part of town. We did a lot of fishing in those days, not so much for sport but for something to eat. Saturdays and Sundays always found us on the beach with surf rod and sand fleas, and it was usually no trouble to fill a bucket with whiting and spot. I was always searching for new, wild delicacies and one sunny Sunday I spotted a hedge of prickly pear heavily laden with ripe fruit. Much of it had already fallen and rotted pointlessly on the ground. It seemed a shame. I had just read where varieties of prickly pear had been bred that were quite popular in the Middle East. They called it “sabra,” and by golly, the picture of it looked just like the prickly pears here.

Using a sandwich baggie for a glove and my t-shirt for a basket, I harvested a dozen of the ripest fruits and dumped them in my fish bucket. Then I put my t-shirt back on for the ride home. Big mistake. Not two minutes into the ride my belly began to itch. Then it began to burn. By the time we arrived home I had a bona fide rash — quite like the rash I had with my first cactus encounter. It took days to subside, but that evening I had my first taste of sabra.

Wearing rubber gloves, I cut the crown off the fruit, spooned out the purple innards, and plopped it on a plate. Lots of seeds, but so what? Pomegranates have lots of seeds. So do blackberries. In fact, that’s what it tasted like: sweet blackberry jam. Yeah, the seeds were a bit much; flat, sharp and tiny — perfect for getting caught in your teeth — but the flavor was excellent. Come to find out commercial sabra is bred to be seedless. Boy, I’ll bet that’s good.

Soon we moved beachside and I had my own cactus patch. We rented a duplex down Mullet Creek way. Even though we were in a development, we were a long way from town, and these places would have been a burglar’s paradise. Our landlord reacted by planting prickly pear under each window and these were now mature plants. At first I thought this was pretty smart, using thorny plants as a barrier. But what if I were locked out and wanted to climb in my window? Or worse, what if we had a fire and I needed to climb out? A decision was made when I accidentally stepped on a fallen cactus pad.  That experience was so bitter I pulled the plants that day.

Now that I have my own place, I have the dubious honor of being able to choose which plants stay or go. Yes, there was cactus here when I moved in — the “Crown Of Thorns” variety. Gone. The nearest thing to cacti I have now is a small patch of aloe out by the A/C compressor. Aloe’s a succulent, like cactus, and has spines, but there is a big difference between aloe and something like prickly pear. Aloe soothes. Everybody needs an aloe patch.

One final word on cactus: Back when I was a rock star in Buffalo, NY I had a bass player named Mark. Like all fledgling rock stars we had issues finding a place to rehearse. No one wants to live near a rock band. But Mark’s parents, Bill and Betty, didn’t seem to mind. For the entire summer of 1978 we occupied the front porch of their lakeside cottage, holding auditions and lining the pockets of the Genesee Brewing Company, and Bill, I believe, became our first fan. Wherever we played locally, Mark’s folks would be there, picking up the band’s tab and giving moral support. Later in life, Bill donned the persona of “Cactus Bill” and performed for nursing home residents, sometimes accompanied by Mark and Keith, my old bandmates. Eventually “Prickly Pear Betty” and “Cactus Bill” found themselves in a nursing home. Not too long ago, Betty passed away. Cactus Bill met his demise this March. Our first fan…

Cactus connections run deep.

By Rick LaClaire

Every parent’s nightmare:

You’re at work. You’re busy, there are problems to solve, and you are totally engrossed in your daily quest for financial sustenance. The office phone rings. It’s for you. It’s the school nurse. Your child has head lice.

Come on, who hasn’t been in that scenario? My boy supposedly had it twice, though I never found a nit. I’ve still got a supply of Nix and that hincty little comb (are you supposed to throw that out?). Even though I’ll swear my kids came off clean, it was embarrassing. Lice — a personal infestation… Images of filth, poverty, and chickens in your living room…

Every homeowner’s nightmare:

You’re asleep. Typical snoring posture. It’s 5:30 a.m. and you slowly awaken to the faint pitter-patter of little feet. But your children are grown and it sounds like it’s on the roof. Birds, perhaps? You get up. The pitter-patter goes from your bedroom ceiling to the living room ceiling. Something in the attic? You go into the garage for a flashlight and ladder. It’s still dark, so you flick on the light. And there it is: a rat! The homeowner’s answer to head lice. Big as life and twice as real, the ugly beast scampers across a valence and into your soffit — a direct link to the attic. You have rats, sir.

I can live with a lot of unpleasant things. I’ve lived with mice, cockroaches, ants, fleas, peeling wallpaper, and Canadian television. I’ve had roommates even less savory than the bugs. I’ve lived without heat, air conditioning, and even running water. I’ve lived next to a train track. I’ve had neighbors so obnoxious I thought about plugging their plumbing vents with day-old pogy. There’s not much I can’t stand. Okay, clowns make me hurl, but you know that. Yessir, I’m pretty tough. That is, until I see a rat. I cannot abide them. They make my skin crawl.

I have a pest service. This home is the only place I ever subscribed to one. Until the purchase of this humble pile of rocks I left pest control up to the landlord. That, or just lived with it. My first “honey-do” in this first home of mine was to hang a small set of blinds in the bathroom window. For this I needed to drill two holes. When my bit punched through the window frame I thought I had hit an old pipe. What appeared to be a steady stream of rusty water ran smartly down my arm to my elbow. It was there I discovered this was not water, it was ants. Thousands of them.

At first I tried dealing with it myself. For some reason the past owner had a stockpile of ant killer. I sprayed the site where I first saw them, then sprayed around the outside of the place like I had seen the commercial guys do. No go. Everywhere I turned, more ants. There were teensy-weensy black ones; there were brown and black middle-sized ones. There were some that were not only tiny, but transparent. Then, of course, there were fire ants all over the yard. It was just too much.

We already had a termite bond with Sears. We had to have it to get a mortgage. For an extra couple of c-notes they could throw in the other bugs, too. Sale. And man, were these guys good.

The little black ones were called “white-footed ants.” You’d need a microscope to tell that. They and the transparent ones, aptly named “ghost ants,” disappeared in a heartbeat, victims to some kind of bait.  The medium guys, “carpenter ants,” presented a bit of a challenge. It took a couple of months, but the bug tech found the nest (in someone else’s yard) and soon they were goners too.

Fast-forward seventeen years and I’ve still got pest control, but not Sears. They sold out to Terminix. I never kowtow to a railroad job, so I found pest control elsewhere, a company called Premium. These guys are good too, and the very next thing I did after spying a rat in my house was call them. They were here that afternoon.

Premium’s specialty is bugs, not animals. As a courtesy though, Premium baited and set five rat traps for me. I thought that was pretty nice. They also said that if I was “a little old lady” they would even come back and empty them for me.

In the process of placing the traps, the bug guy had to go into the attic. When he removed the access panel rat poop fell on him like hail. It fell on him, the ladder, the floor… Yuck. “Here’s where they’re hanging out,” he said. “Now all you gotta do is find out where they’re getting in, plug it up, and trap out the hangers-on. It’s the standard procedure.”

You’ve seen a rat trap. It’s like a mousetrap on steroids, and those suckers will break a finger. What I suddenly noticed was the trap’s maker, a company in Pennsylvania called Victor.

Many years ago, when I was fifteen and sixteen, I ran a trap line for muskrats and raccoons along the Black River in northern New York. I was no Jeremiah Johnson, but I managed to flesh a pelt or two. My traps were all Victors. They were single-spring, number-one leg-hold traps, illegal now. Just seeing the name Victor brought back a flood of memories. Cold, still winter mornings; the jingle of shell ice on the creek; scouting for sign; skinning my first ‘coon…

“You know, when I was kid in upstate New York I had a trap line. You tell people that today and they treat you like you ate one of your own babies.”

Was that me talking, or was it the bug guy? It was the bug guy! “Wow! What a coincidence,” I replied. “So did I.”

“You’ll have fun with this, then. Rats aren’t very smart. Just keep the traps baited and set until they stop snapping. They can’t resist this secret bait. If you’ve plugged the entry, that’s all there is to it.” Then he showed me the secret bait: a Slim Jim. Three hours later, we heard the first trap snap.

I began with what appeared to be the obvious point of entry. It was a patch of sagging soffit screen above the garage, concealed behind a podocarpus tree. They climbed the branches, tugged away a foot-long section of screen, and had left a greasy spot on the wood with their comings and goings. I spent a Saturday replacing the entire section of soffit, rebuilding, caulking, battening the screen, and painting. What a chore, and all overhead. I then trimmed the podocarpus. Sore shoulders for Sunday.

By this point, the third day of our infestation, I had killed three rats. The third was a pregnant female. It was obvious. Then there was a lull. No sounds in the attic, no traps snapping. I had plugged up what I thought was the egress and felt satisfied. The bug guy was right: This was kind of fun. Easy, too. Then, at 5 a.m. on the third day: Snap! They were still getting in. But where?

Try and find the smallest, most isolated and inaccessible imperfection in your home’s construction. That’s what I had to do. I’d been round the outside a dozen times and there was only one spot I could not see. It was an extremely sheltered corner where the screened porch met the roof in the back. Weeks before,  I had laboriously replaced a rotten plank of fascia, and I’d had to do it pretty much “blind,” leaning over the eave on my belly because the porch roof  wouldn’t support me. It had been a nasty chore, working with my feet angled above my head, and having to use a mirror and flashlight to position the replacement. My working window was about five minutes per session as the blood rushed to my brain. I did a lot of swearing, and rushed to finish. This had to be it.

The moment my ladder clunked against the drip edge I could see it: rat poop all over the screened-porch roof. There, way back in the corner, was a one-inch gap in my hurried repair. The area around the tiny hole was dark with rat-grease and gnaw marks. There were mature trees overhanging the house nearby. This was their egress.

Well, a lot more swearing ensued but I got it patched. Some rather giddy tree pruning followed. Two more trap-snaps later and all is now quiet. The final tally? Five dead rats.

Having rats is not something you want to tell your neighbors — it’d be kind of like saying your kid has head lice — but I did anyway. I discovered I was not alone. Almost every beachside Florida home has a rat story. Or a squirrel story or possum story. I even heard a skunk story.

But, thank goodness, no clown infestations.

By Rick LaClaire

Autumn is over, and as I write this, the wind is blowing thirty out of the northwest, the temperature is in the 40s, and an incongruous yellow sun is blazing in a clear sky. Winter has descended, and by the time you read this, it will hopefully be on the wane.

My favorite season in Florida has always been autumn, probably because it was my first season here. The temperatures drop to near-perfect, and after the doldrums of summer, the fishing picks up. Great shoals of mullet run the beach, drawing predators in close pursuit. I’m not even sure that happened this past autumn, though. On October 1 it started to blow, followed by the most expansive invasion of sargasso I have ever witnessed. For a full month our beach was covered by this fly-breeding cloak, only to be repeatedly sucked back into the shorebreak, making fishing impossible. What a disappointment during my favorite time of year.

Another name for autumn is “fall,” which seems fitting. A fall is a decline — it can be slow or fast — and as the weather declines into winter, foliage and fruit fall. And so the season is named.

There are other types of falls. There’s that hair extension some women employ — that’s called a “fall.” There’s the one with the capital “F,” which relates to Adam and Eve. There are waterfalls, which Florida seems to lack. Then there is another kind, sudden and accidental, that can come at any time during life, but are most devastating as life itself declines.

Garrison Keillor once did a monologue on falling. The gist of it was that when a fall occurs in public, like on a soundstage or a podium, people tend to think it funny. Garrison is a tall man, and as he explains, when you’re tall, a fall can be especially traumatic. I don’t see how a foot or so in height can make that much difference, falls are nasty for people of any size, but I sure believe it’s rude to laugh at someone else’s misfortune.

For one thing, a fall is embarrassing. It can even ruin your career. Do you remember our only “un-elected” president, Gerald Ford? He slipped on the stairs while de-boarding the presidential jet and it was caught on tape. I must have seen that minor tumble fifty times a day on TV. “Saturday Night Live” built a whole persona around it. Chevy Chase, in the lamest presidential impersonation ever, fumbled and bumbled about the stage as an ersatz Gerald Ford, and at one point tripped over his podium so convincingly he broke a rib. Of course, as SNL always does, they milked the act week after week and then, as it was about to die, Gerald Ford took another tumble while skiing. Apparently no one wanted a clumsy president — whether he was or not, no one cared, the trait had been established by the media — and he lost his only presidential campaign. In my opinion, it was that slip on the stairs that began his political descent.

Ford lost his bid to Jimmy Carter, a from-out-of-nowhere candidate that was in way over his head. Jimmy promised change, a big smile, and physical fitness. To prove the latter, he exited his inaugural limousine and walked the broad avenue, shaking hands and smiling all the way. That Inauguration Day was probably the high point of his career. When not being nagged by the energy crisis, high unemployment, a festering Middle East and skyrocketing inflation, Jimmy would put on his smile and jog. So confident was he in his fitness that he would run in public events. Then he fell — or more exactly, collapsed — during a race. So began his political decline. It seemed from that point onward, his presidency lost support and every twist and turn was for the worse.

Jesus fell. Three times. I know this from my seven years in service as an altar boy in the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Faith. Every Friday during the Lenten season, a somber ceremony known as the Stations of the Cross would take place. It involved, at a minimum, three altar boys: one to carry the cross and two with candles on broomsticks. If any other altar boys showed up, they were relegated to the “skirt parade” — mere groupies.

Have you ever seen the movie “The Passion of the Christ”? The Stations of the Cross is a sanitized, more digestible version of that. No, they don’t whup anybody with fish hooks, as they do in the film; in our case, the theater of the mind was employed via a series of beautifully abstract stained-glass windows. It was performed late in the day, near sunset, and was nature, art, theater, and poetry woven into a single performance. Top that, Mel Gibson.

Clowns fall a lot. They trip and they tumble; all of it choreographed and wildly exaggerated, of course. And people laugh. Well, not me. As my regular readership knows (Hi, Mom!), clowns make me puke. I don’t believe it’s possible to laugh and vomit at the same time.

Slapstick comedians take a lot of falls, too. I never thought slapstick was funny. If you need a cue to laugh (the slapstick) it’s probably not funny to begin with. And what a waste of food: cream pies, seltzer, rotten tomatoes… The phrase “taking a fall” is interesting, though. In street parlance it means that one takes the blame for something he didn’t do. How fitting. No one plans to fall; it’s something that is thrust upon you.

One of my favorite relatives is my Uncle Kris. Kris emigrated from Norway and you will never find a more devoted American. He has embraced the computer age and I believe he is the first real blogger in our family. For years we received his weekly missives on all sorts of subjects, from politics to getting snowed-in with Chuck Berry. He has a way of politely murdering the English language, which I find brilliant; I have often thought he should write a book.

Kris is not young, and about a year ago he took a fall. Like Garrison Keillor, he is a tall man and the results of his accident were traumatic and complicated. I have only received one e-mail from him in the past year. For much of this time he has been literally laid-up, attempting to cope with the pain and lack of mobility, all from a simple fall. Falls are a great fear among the elderly.

Then, this summer, I got the call. Not The Call, mind you, but a call all the same: my own mother had taken a fall. Thoughts of a broken hip, cracked vertebra, neck involvement (like Uncle Kris), and a long bedridden recovery crowded my mind when my sister told me. My mother is not young either, and accidents of this kind can sometimes lead to a final convalescence. Fortunately, though badly bruised, my mother has recovered.

I’ve had many falls. The one with the most enduring effect was not even my worst. I was 13 or so, and fell off the back of a flatbed truck during a jackrabbit start. I fell on the gravel face forward, with my hands instinctively out front for protection. I didn’t break anything, didn’t even bleed much, but the palm of my right hand was sensitive for a decade. Using a screwdriver, a chisel, any kind of an awl or punch — even throwing a baseball — would set it off. It was a burning sensation, very sudden and intense.

I’ve fallen out of trees. Off surfboards. Off bicycles. Off a roof. I even fell off my flip-flop once. Yes, I did. That may sound impossible, and no one would believe me at the time, but that’s what happened, I swear. It is rumored alcohol was a factor. We were walking home from a bar in the dark, and yep, I took a header. I limped for two days. According to my wife, I limped the first day on my left foot, and the second on my right. I told her, “See? It’s so bad, it’s spreading.”

Watch your step.

AND YET MORE RANDOM NOTES 

By Rick LaClaire

“Capitalism is the exploitation of man by men. Communism is just the opposite.” — Nikita Khrushchev

Yes, another year has passed. They sure go fast, don’t they? It seems like only yesterday I was shaking out my leisure suit, looking for party leftovers. Nowadays I’m more likely to find a suppository wrapper. This phenomenon was best summed up by Bob Dylan. When asked how he felt when he turned the ripe old age of forty, he said, “Ya just can’t help it.” Yeah Bob, you hit the nail on the head. Time passes, and ya just can’t help it. And when time passes, people pass too. Ya just can’t help it.

Now I could begin this new year loudly lamenting the passage of Steve Jobs or Elizabeth Taylor — people with bigger-than-life fame. Or I could do what I usually do, which is doting on the unsung and less significant. The rich and famous get their lion’s share of attention, so I think it’s only fair to elevate the quickly-forgotten. In some ways they’ve affected me more than their much-lauded contemporaries. For instance, Steve Jobs never entertained me for one minute when I was a teenager, but in half-hour increments, Sherwood Schwartz sure did.

Remember “Gilligan’s Island” and “The Brady Bunch”? Yeah, the shows are corny today, but back in ’65 I never missed an episode of “Gilligan.” Part of it had to do with the fact that we only got two channels on the ol’ black and white Zenith (and one channel was Canadian), but you just never knew; maybe this would be the episode when they get rescued. Of course, we didn’t want them to get rescued. There would be no show — and worse, we’d be relegated to watching the curling playoffs in Saskatoon. “Gilligan” was pulled after the ’67 season and it wouldn’t be until ’69 that my attention was captured by the Bradys. It was from that family I learned which paisley shirt pattern best matched my striped pants. Six kids, two parents, a housekeeper and only one toilet? Except for the live-in maid and the gay dad, that sounded like home to me. You know, after watching over my kids’ shoulders as they indulge in their so-called “reality” TV, I find watching “Brady Bunch” re-runs refreshing. They’re still in daily rotation on one of the religious cable stations.

Schwartz laid some eggs, too. Do you recall “It’s About Time” and “Harper Valley PTA”? I didn’t think so, but everyone remembers “My Favorite Martian.” Schwartz had his hand in there, too. The talents of Sherwood Schwartz, to me, fueled what I call the Aluminum Age in TV. Television’s Golden Age was the Fifties. I call the Sixties the Aluminum Age because that was what the ol’ black and white Zenith’s body was made of: anodized aluminum. Mr. Schwartz died last July. He was 94.

Thirty some-odd years ago I was graced with the gift of a “licorice pizza,” which some will recognize as a vinyl LP, by one of my favorite D.C. blues bands, The Nighthawks.  The band has had a variety of lineups over the years (including Brevard’s own Danny Morris) and this album, Jacks and Kings, featured one Pinetop Perkins. “Pinetop,” for those who don’t know, was a brand of cheap rotgut whiskey which circulated among the troops on both sides during our War Between the States, so named for the pungent pine dowel used as a cork. I don’t know if that has any bearing on Mr. Perkins’s moniker, but man, could that guy roll on the piano.

My favorite cut has always been “Pinetop’s Boogie-Woogie,” a “funny little song” in which he extols the listener to “hold it,” then “get it” and boogie. This song rocks. It’s fun to dance to as well as play, and I’ve tried forever and ever to get that Pinetop piano roll down and can’t quite “get it.” His real name was Joe Willie Perkins and he died last March at age 97.

Another loss in March was Geraldine Ferraro. Remember her? If not, remember Walter Mondale? Well, in case you don’t, Walter Mondale ran for president in 1984 and I (and two other people) voted for him. In retrospect I don’t know why I did that, but I do remember he was the first nominee to run with a woman as his vice-president. No, he didn’t make it, and I always thought he had a sex change shortly afterward and became Madeline Albright, but that’s just a rumor. Anyway, in 1984, it took a lot of guts to bust into Reagan-era politics with a woman in tow. And it took a lot more guts to be that woman. Of course the Republicans took her apart piece-by-piece and in the end, well, you know what happened. Four more years of The Gipper — or “The Gypper,” depending on which social stratum you occupied. Geraldine Ferraro was 75.

Has there ever been a more distinctive singing voice than Phoebe Snow’s? You could recognize her in a heartbeat. The first time I heard her was in college, when my then-housemate Sam bought the Still Crazy album by Paul Simon. Simon was always infusing new sounds and Phoebe certainly filled the bill. Despite legal hassles with her labels, she was much in demand and recorded with the likes of Lou Rawls, Garland Jeffreys, Billy Joel and Queen, among many others. She suffered a cerebral hemorrhage in 2010 and never fully recovered. Born Phoebe Ann Laub, she died in April at age 60.

When someone called “Doctor Death” meets his demise, do you celebrate, mourn, or what? Also known as “Jack the Dripper,” his goal was “death with dignity,” and as I grow older and nearer my own time I find myself agreeing more and more with his philosophy. He was not a wanton killer. Yes, his methods were said to defy the then-current moral standards, but did they really? Abortion had been legal for decades. You could kill your defenseless fetal offspring, but not willingly take your own declining life? Kevorkian said it was okay to do that and put his own butt on the line. His goal, he said, was not to kill people, but to end their suffering. He went to jail. After release from prison in 2007, he devoted his life to lecturing and running for Congress. He was also an artist who sometimes painted with his own blood. I find that just a bit weird. He died in June.

Chester, Festus, Miz Kitty, Doc… What do those names conjure? “Gunsmoke”! It is said that the Wild West only lasted seventeen years, but Gunsmoke lasted twenty. There’s something to be said for a TV show that can re-write history. Of course the glue that held the Gunsmoke gang together was Marshall Matt Dillon, also known as James Arness. Born James Aurness and father of 1970 world-champion surfer Rolf Aurness, he was 88 when he died in June.

Clarence “Big Man” Clemons, Jerry Lieber… The arts took a beating in 2011. I was never a fan of Bruce Springsteen, but who could resist that signature sax style of Clarence Clemons? And remember hearing “Jailhouse Rock” for the first time? I was only five then, and ten years later I covered the very same song with my high school rock combo. Someone told me Big Mama Thornton wrote that song, but no, it was a couple of white guys from Baltimore called Jerry Leiber and Jeff Stoller. Clarence Clemons died in June, Jerry Leiber in August.

Finally, does the name Lana Peters ring a bell? Perhaps you would know her better by her birth name, Svetlana Stalina. Yes folks, she was the daughter of that fun-loving, devil-may-care, madcap despot known as Josef Stalin. Now why would the only daughter of the leader of the not-so-free world want to defect to the land of hot dogs and Playboy magazine? Well, why not? Nikita Khrushchev, one of Stalin’s homies, once said he witnessed the “man of steel” grab Svetlana’s mother by the hair and drag her to the dance floor (it’s rumored alcohol was a factor). I hope it was a good song. Obviously, Svetlana had daddy issues, and a few years after his death she defected to America where she took the name Lana Peters. Hounded by reporters and paparazzi all her days here, she desperately sought privacy, winding up back in Russia for a short time in the ’80s. She died in Wisconsin at age 85.

The Memory Season

By Rick LaClaire

“It’s Xmas time again/Has it really been a year?” — Joe Jackson, “Tango Atlantico”

My wife’s family has an enduring tradition for Thanksgiving dinner. After all are seated and grace is said, each person at the table must say what they are thankful for. Of course everybody says “family” first and then something like “the Buffalo Bills” (if they’re winning) or “the Sabres” (if they’re not), but sometimes a valuable nugget of wisdom will be divulged. I could share some of these, but I think it would be too personal. My point is that the holiday season is a time for gathering and reflection, and what better time than at year’s end, Christmas.

For some reason we give each other gifts at Christmas. This can get way out of hand. Why? It is written that the three Magi gave gifts to the baby Jesus, so we do the same to commemorate that act. Well, that’s what I was told… Apparently a lot may have been lost in translation.

Memories are gifts you give yourself. People may share the illusion of your memories, but you will perceive them uniquely, making them truly your own. In other words, the things you remember may not be what someone else does.

We all have different triggers for memories: a song, a sunset, the timbre of a voice. For me, smells are the strongest catalyst. The whiff of freshly cut celery reminds me of my mother. I recently bought a truck that was owned by a smoker. It smells like my father’s Dodge, and it brings him to mind. Wind Song perfume carries me back to college; Patchouli incense to high school. And the smell of a tightly-packed school of mullet gives me Florida memories. The fall run is on as I write this, and the air is ripe with Florida memories.

I have a lot of fishing memories, and as always, it’s not all about the fishing. Like the first time I went for tarpon up Sebastian River. Another summer day in ’87, we put in before dawn so we could net bait before the bite. The sky broke an eerie pink, a foreboding sky, and soon the sun illuminated mammoth sky castles of rain clouds. Lightning flashed. We pulled under an abandoned boathouse to escape a shower. Rain drummed on the tin roof. It leaked, and soon we realized we were going to get wet anyway, so why not fish? Huge tarpon rolled all around us. It was hot and extremely humid, so hot the lens on my Pocket Instamatic fogged up. My old friend Tyler and I jumped more than a dozen tarpon that day and I landed only one. It was the smallest to strike, and after an hour’s fight on gear that wasn’t geared for tarpon, we gently lip-gaffed her. I hefted it for the camera. It is my favorite fishing picture. It’s fuzzy, foggy, and you can barely discern the fish. But it shouts “Florida” in every aspect: heat, sweat, menacing clouds, and a grin on my face that shows how much I love this place.

Florida, to me, means outdoor activity year-round: fishing in the warm months, hunting and fishing in the cool ones. I’d never really explored the interior of the state till a few years ago when I took my teenage son squirrel hunting in Osceola County. We don’t do it much now, his interests have shifted as he has grown, but these are the freshest of my favorite memories. The best was our first foray. We’d seen these woods from a car window but had no idea how beautiful they were till we got into them. It was like going back to the beginning of time.

But I quickly learned that I needed lessons in Southern hunting, and our first experience resulted in not a shot being fired. It was toward sunset, on a gorgeous December day, and I felt I had let my boy down. “Here,”” I said, and handed him the truck keys. “You drive.”
“Who? Me?” His eyes went wide. He was just fourteen. We were in the middle of nowhere, on a well-kept dirt road, no one in sight, and I wanted him to remember this day whether we killed anything or not. He did pretty well, for a first-timer. I figured it would give him something to brag to his buddies about. But he’s not like that, I guess. So it’s just a memory for him and me. He sure was nervous behind the wheel. Still is.

There are older memories. Like voting for Carter in 1980, our first full year here. My wife and I were young and childless — basically freewheeling — and we’d bopped up and down the Eastern States as the mood prescribed. We were renting a house with friends over by the University and, at that age, had just one goal: fun. That we had. The only whiff of seriousness came with election time. As faulty a Chief Executive as he was (aren’t they all?), my wife and I were Carter fans. We registered to vote at the old courthouse on Neiman and dragged our house-sharers with us: we were going to exercise our civic duty. We also discovered that “Vegetarian” was not a political party — but that’s another story.

Anyway, as soon as we registered, the debates began. Not the ones on TV, but the ones at home. Carter was a loser. Reagan was too old. Carter was a wimp. Reagan was a war-monger. Look at the mess Carter made of the economy. Reagan would cause World War III. Look at the mess Carter made in Iran. Reagan is a phony who dyes his hair. On and on… It seemed as if my wife and I were the only registered Democrats in Brevard County. That was proven on Election Day.

Our polling place was an auditorium on the FIT campus. My wife and I worked for the same company and didn’t have to be at work until nine, so we figured on making a quick stop on the way in to cast our ballots. Apparently, everyone else had the same idea. The line was out the door. We had a long wait, and in that line we heard plenty of strong talk, all pro-Reagan. We decided to just wait our turns and shut up. This was not a place for debate. They would have made mincemeat out of us.

Consequently, we were an hour late for work. We explained to the boss we were delayed at the polls, and isn’t it great that you have employees who exercise their civic duty? “Sure,” she replied, “just as long as you didn’t vote for that wimp Carter.”

That night we drank heavily and watched the returns. Other friends joined us. We had a full living room and only two Democrats. The fire flew. Then, before the votes were even tallied completely, Carter conceded. My wife and I looked at each other sadly. I guess Carter really was a wimp.

Why is this a cherished memory? Because it was the first time I ever voted on a voting machine. My first presidential vote, in1972, was cast in absentia, on paper and mailed. That guy lost, too. Then, in 1976, I didn’t vote at all. I forgot to register! This time, 1980, I’d done all the homework and was solid in my choice. So continued a tradition that holds to this day: I have never voted a winner in a presidential election.

Babysitting a parrot, discovering I don’t care much for scuba diving, catching a world-record palometa (and releasing it!), riding out hurricanes… The Christmas tree of my mind is deeply surrounded by gifts of my own making. Now, at year’s end, it’s time to open them.

Wasted Day
• Rick LaClaire

“And the hangovers hurt more than they used to…” — Hank Williams, Jr.

I have a musician friend with a theory about life expectancy. He claims that each of us is born with a preprogrammed number of breaths and heartbeats; that each of us, regardless of how we treat our bodies, is doomed to wear out anyway at a certain specified point.

G. Gordon Liddy once said that the maximum mileage of the human machine is 125 years. If you didn’t smoke, drink, have any stress, mainline meth or get hit by a truck, your body would wear out anyway at one-two-five. I’ve certainly never known anyone to live that long, but I also don’t know anyone who’s never been stressed (maybe it’s because they know me?).

The point is, we don’t live forever. Time is precious, and time lost is exactly that — lost — because we have only so many breaths and so many years. But that’s only if you believe my bass player or a convicted Watergate burglar…

I have certainly noticed one constant: the older I get, the faster time passes. That’s handy in a way, like when you’re waiting for a flight connection or having a root canal. A couple of hours of unpleasantness were hell when I was 21. At pushin’-60 it’s only Purgatory … Or maybe Limbo. Which place has the calypso Muzak?

So you may suppose a mere annoyance like a hangover, at my age, would be a walk in the park. Its only cure is time, and it passes so quickly at age 57 that — pffft — just like that, it’s over. Not so. Why? Because hangovers, at my age, are actually worse than they were when I was 21. And I also believe that when one has a hangover, time is suspended. It sure felt that way a few weeks ago.

I don’t have a lot of free time. Now I know I have friends who will say, “LaClaire, if you’re so busy how come you have time to write these stupid articles?” And I have an answer for that. Writing stupid articles, like having a hangover, is time suspended. It may not take that long, but it sure seems like it does.

Anyway, I have only a certain amount of hours each week to devote to primping and maintaining this humble pile of rocks I call home. This usually takes place on weekends, Saturday mornings being the prime time for outdoor chores like mowing, pruning, mending fence and snaking drain vents. To avoid the energy-sucking heat of the day, I like to be in the yard by 8 a.m. and in the pool by noon. To lose this window is like losing a week’s worth of chores, so I like to arise chipper, rested, and alert. That having been said, it seldom happens. That’s because Friday night is when my wife and I hit the town.

Recently, on one particular Friday, we didn’t just “hit” the town, we kicked its butt. As usual, we began with a cocktail at home and then walked to a local restaurant for dinner. Service was slow, so we managed to down a few glasses of wine in waiting. Then a beer with dinner, an aperitif in the bar, and the next thing you know we’re at the Oasis and I’m slammin’ Cuervo. Of course we run into neighbors there, and they must buy us a round, and what began as one shot for the road turns into three sheets to the wind.

There are as many cures for a hangover as there are ways to get one. One cure that always comes to mind is what I call “The Otis.” You may remember Otis Campbell, Mayberry’s loveable town drunk on “The Andy Griffith Show.” I’m sure you’ve seen the scene: Otis awakes in his personalized jail cell, hungover as all get-out, and Andy enters with the makings of an instant cure. Somehow this mixture of tomato juice, Worcestershire sauce, and a raw egg performs a miracle I’ve never experienced. An obviously nauseated Otis guzzles this potion, and at the cue of a tympanic boom, he is suddenly well. Oh, how I wish that was factual. Oh, how I wish there were some elixir capable of curing this most miserable state of self-infliction.

Some say “hair of the dog.” I’ve never been able to do that. I can’t even look at a bottle of liquor, much less smell or taste it when I have a hangover. I’ve been told that means I’m not an alcoholic. I’ve also been told it means I’m a wuss.

Others have said you should eat a big breakfast. Nothing light and fruity, but something substantial like eggs, bacon, ham, and biscuits with gravy, all washed down with hot coffee or a cold Coke. In my experience, that can help, but there’s no guarantee. Sometimes it only serves as fuel for the malady. Especially if you’re like me, one of the lucky people whose hangovers are primarily in the gastric region.

Many years ago there was an over-the-counter hangover cure called “Quick Over.” Do you remember this? It was a blister pack containing a handful of large pills to be taken all at once. A couple were aspirin and a couple were antacid, combined to supposedly alleviate both the cranial and gastric symptoms of a hangover. I tried this once before a fishing trip. Unfortunately, a couple of other pills were heavy doses of caffeine, for lethargy. Did it work? It made me sick as a dog, worse than if I had taken nothing. If it had worked, it would still be on the market, wouldn’t it? And I’d own stock…

We all know that a hangover will eventually end. The span of that time can vary widely though, depending on what caused your hangover.

Doctors say there are two causes. One is an element known as a congener. Congeners are what make gin taste like gin and sour mash taste so sour. They’re adulterants, mostly. Flavorings. Tannins for color. The Coke in your rum and Coke. So, an easy way to avoid hangovers would be to drink your booze straight, right? Wrong. The other cause is the alcohol itself. Let’s face it, if you drink too much you will be sick. No two ways about it.

Let’s examine the building blocks of my last disabling hangover. A drink at home… well, maybe two drinks. Okay, three bourbon and sodas before deciding on a restaurant. Like I said, service was slow there, so we had some wine. So three shots of bourbon, two merlots, then a Guinness with my grouper sammitch. Then a Drambuie at the rail. So already we’ve had whisky, wine, beer, and brandy. With a nice greasy chunk of fried fish floating around in it. Then the clincher: Cuervo Gold. Three shots. Whisky, wine, beer, brandy, and cactus juice — that’s a certified puker! But I didn’t. Nope. If I had, I probably would have felt better. Instead, I had the mother of all hangovers. I slept through my Saturday morning choretime. Actually, “slept” isn’t the right word. I groaned through my chore time.

Nothing makes you feel stupider than a hangover. It’s not like a regular disease — you don’t “catch” it from somebody. You don’t inherit hangovers through your genes. You bring them on yourself, through a process known as gluttony. And it is a wasteful process. In that case, I wasted an entire Saturday. My most productive hours, hours set aside to enhance the curb appeal of this humble home, my greatest investment, destroyed by wasteful selfish gluttony. Time lost.

O, Pioneers! Part IV: Sodbusters

• By Rick LaClaire • 

It is August as I write this… August in one of the driest Florida summers I can recall. You’ve often heard me warn of dry Florida summers — heat, fire, misery… But that’s on the mainland. Beachside’s a different story.

Dry summers mean that every day is a beach day. The surf warms and stays that way (unless we get an upwelling — we’ll talk about that some other time). So what if your lawn is brown? Lawns don’t belong beachside; too much water, too many chemicals. When you get sick of looking at the hell-on-earth your yard has become, just go jump in the ocean. And be thankful you’re not mowing.

When I began this serial I posed a question: What would have happened if the original Florida settlers had arrived during a dry summer? I remember experiencing my first Buffalo winter and telling my wife, “I think the people who settled this place came on the Fourth of July.” Our original Florida Crackers must have come at Christmas. A dry summer would have certainly been a deterrent, as the earliest settlers were primarily mainlanders. It was considered stupid to build on the beach. Thank God we are now enlightened. I think…

And so it was with the great LaClaire emigration of ’87. We became mainlanders. The house is still there, in Eau Gallie. I have no fondness for the place, but I drive by it occasionally. The memories it kindles are forlorn — homesick, broke, heat-stricken… And all in a dry summer. Add to that the pressure of starting a business, and it was some of the worst stress I’ve ever experienced.

But we were pioneers then. We had taken our future into our own hands and would soon find out what we were made of. We’d provisioned and mustered in Buffalo; had our shakedown in the highways and hills of southwestern New York and Pennsylvania; fought hostile commuters on the outskirts of Fort Mom; reconnoitered under the huge sombrero at South of the Border; and had a hoedown in Florence. Now, when I think back, the final leg of our journey was probably the smoothest.

By this point, I had mastered the U-Haul’s retarded stick shift and had become somewhat comfortable in even the thickest of traffic. That was tested again in Jacksonville, but I prevailed. I’d even learned to live with the intermittent radio (skrrrxx, skrrrxx…). I guess it was like living next to a railroad track; after a while you don’t even notice. Driving that beast had become second nature. Then, an obstacle. Not the largest, but the most embarrassing.

It was a mere curb. We’d arrived at our new home and I was attempting to back the U-Haul up to the front door. In all our miles I had never faced the scenario of backing up. All my motions had been in the forward gears. Reverse, I soon learned, was another acquired skill. I tried and failed, stalling again and again, blocking the road and creating ample entertainment for the neighbors. They soon gathered.

“Whatcha tryna do?” a portly man with a mouthful of chicken asked. It was dinnertime. His was in his hand. Not a mere drumstick, but a whole half a chicken. Grease ran between his fingers. I felt like saying something snotty like “going bowling,” but I bit my tongue. I was hungry, sweaty, tired, and suddenly aware of the skrrrxx-ing radio. “I’m stuck on the curb,” I admitted. “It’s been a long day.”

“You sure you wanna cross the lawn with this thing?” He took a huge bite out of his chicken and chewed vividly.

“It’s full of furniture. I wanted to get close to the door.”

“Well, then –” and he pitched the chicken in the yard “– shove over.”

What? Before I could stop him he had displaced me. He was so big I couldn’t resist. Chicken grease on the shifter, grease on the steering wheel… He slapped her into reverse and in a heartbeat we were at the door.

“Uh… Thanks,” I managed.

“Thank me later. We probably just snapped off a half-dozen sprinkler heads.”

Do things ever turn out the way you imagine them beforehand? They never have for me. Our new home in Eau Gallie was no exception. Yes, I had seen the place and a dozen others in my previous trip to lay down a security deposit. It seemed nice then. In fact, it was the nicest I’d been shown. But now that we were actually in the place… I guess I hadn’t looked too closely.

One of the first chores the coonskin settlers had to negotiate was land-clearing. Before you could build a house, corral the livestock, sink a well or plant a seed, you had to carve your place in the wilderness. My land-clearing chores were discovered at first light the next day. When I had seen the place six weeks before, the lawn was trimmed, full, and neat. That was the last time a mower had been pushed over this property. The lawn was now thigh-high. I didn’t need a mower. I needed a reaper. Apparently my neighbors had also noticed. Parked in the center of my lawn were a mower and a can of gas, courtesy of the chicken-eater. I found it rude, but complied. I spent the first four hours of my first morning in our new Florida digs mowing — or should I say reaping.

There were other problems. The carpet was full of sandspurs; you couldn’t walk barefoot in the house. Our two-year-old found that out right away. The bathrooms were moldy. I opened the dishwasher to discover all its parts sitting on a rack within. The toilet ran — who knew for how long? The fridge was skanky, and our AC consisted of two window units: one in the dining area and one in the baby’s bedroom. And there were bugs, lots of them.

There was a shed in the back, full of old plumbing and an ancient trunk. Hoping for treasure, I flipped the lid. I was horrified at the sight of hundreds of huge cockroaches, fairly seething within. I slammed it shut and shuddered all the way to the house. “Don’t ever go in there,” I said to my wife.

Our little wake-up calls were constant. The water tasted terrible. There were fire ants all over the yard. Half the stove didn’t work. And yes, I had broken off a half-dozen sprinkler heads. Compared to the setbacks and disappointments our pioneer forefathers had experienced, our torments were minor, but didn’t seem so then. All contributed to a heaviness, a burden that grew daily and finally manifested itself in deep homesickness. We had left all our friends, good jobs, family, and a comfortable flat in a nice neighborhood for this: a sweltering pile of moldering cinder blocks in a strange and seemingly hostile land.

This was our “soddie,” this Eau Gallie bungalow. It was the first spindly root of our establishment here. The pioneers of the Great Plains built soddies. Generations later, they became a source of pride, these holes-out-of-the-ground. And that’s exactly what they were: dwellings comprised of the land itself. They represented a make-do spirit in a land of no lumber. Though meant to be temporary, some Midwestern farm families preserved them. They proved to be durable, when built right. Cool in the summer, warm in the winter. And they remind you where you came from.

No, I have no fond memories of our first house here. It was gloomy as a cave and rank as the artesian water that spewed from the sprinklers I eventually fixed. Probably just like a soddie… The place seemed cursed to me. Drug dealers had occupied it before us. There had been a big bust. Children were involved. It was a “marked” house — doomed. Consequently, the neighbors were nosy. We felt watched all the time. There wasn’t a chore I could do without the chicken-eater butting in. Mow the lawn? Yer doin’ it wrong. Here, lemme show ya. Change the oil in the Buick? Ya don’t want thirty-weight, ya want twenny. The clincher came when his wife accused my wife of wearing the same outfit two days in a row.

We lived there for nine months. In the space of a marriage, a good one anyway, that’s not a long time. But whenever I drive by, I still get this “clunk” in my chest. The heaviness comes back. After our two-vehicle wagon train emigration I thought we would be through with our adventure. Twenty-four years later, it hasn’t ended yet.

Mosquitoes love my feet. There, I said it. I attract biting insects. It was even this way when I was a kid. I complained to my mother once, and she said it was because I was so sweet. My dad said maybe it was because I smelled like something rotten.

For some reason I attract a lot of things, some less onerous than others. For example, babies like me. But then, so do winos and panhandlers. Cats like me. Someone told me cats are good judges of character, and they can tell right off if you’re a decent person. Someone else said maybe it’s because I smell like fish. Regardless, I’m allergic to cats. I think they like me because they like to watch my eyes get all red, itchy and swollen.

There are things that don’t like me, too: Mexican food, hot chicken wings, draft beer… How do I know this? Because I keep trying to make them love me (I love them) and they treat me worse every time I imbibe. Truckers don’t like me either. This I discovered while piloting the only truck I’d ever driven on our great emigration south in May, 1987.

It was our first full day on the trail. We’d mustered, had our shakedown, and were now actually heading south — well, more like southeast, because our next stop would be Fairfax, Virginia, also known as “Fort Mom.” Our entry into Pennsylvania was Route 15, which in those days was a mere two lanes until you were in the heart of the state at Williamsport. Truckers didn’t treat it that way, though. To them, it was a major route. he road was wall-to-wall semis. They had no patience for an old, underpowered, undergeared U-Haul driven by a white-knuckled, inexperienced wannabe trucker tormented by a faulty radio (skrryyxxxx). These hurtling behemoths roared past me one after another, honking and blinking their brights, reminding me constantly that I was out of my element.

Look at a road map of Pennsylvania. Why are the roads so squiggly? Nothing is straight, and south of Williamsport they all seem to slant in the same direction. Then take a look at a topographical map. Whoa! That’s why! Ol’ Pensy is one rugged state. In fact, it looks like a rug from the air. A very wrinkled rug.

There are beautiful river gorges, the West Branch of the Susquehanna and the Juniata come to mind, and everything’s covered with trees. It also means driving a standard shift on hills — not my greatest talent — and my trucking buddies never let me forget it. However, by the end of that day, as we crossed the Potomac into Virginia, I had finally mastered the technique. In fact, I learned more about driving that day, shoulder-to-shoulder with the finest drivers on the planet (truckers), than I had in the past fifteen years. Like the clerk at the U-Haul repository in Buffalo said: “Everybody learns on these things.” Then, right when you think you know it all, you find yourself in Fairfax County, Virginia, during rush hour.

D.C. has the worst traffic in the world. Whether you’re in Fairfax, Arlington, Alexandria, or Vienna, yep, you’re in D.C. Traffic is so bad it spreads like a disease across northern Virginia. If you’re anywhere within thirty miles of the District of Columbia, you are infected. And on this warm evening in May, it was all under construction.

Everything down to one lane, everything dirt, stops and goes over the nastiest of humps… Supposedly this was Route 50, the main trail to Fort Mom. Of course the pioneers had stretches like this — swamps, creeks, broken ground. In a way, they probably had it better in those situations. For one thing, their vehicles were pulled rather than pushed. I think that’s a more efficient way to ford a snag. My wheels spun, my gears slipped, but I did not stall. I wouldn’t have dared. The coonskin types faced hostile natives. This was worse. These were government employees freshly released from work. Tens of thousands of them. If I had stumbled, I would have been trampled. Finally, Fort Mom.

We had a mini family reunion that night; my mother, my sister’s family and mine. Alcohol flowed freely, as it always seems to do, and for some reason (I can’t remember what) I had to practically unload and re-pack the U-Haul. It was a search for something, a toy or teddy bear, and I remember being extremely annoyed. I was also extremely apprehensive. This was the end of our family ties, the southern limit of our blood. From here, we would truly be on our own.

On our first trek South in ’79, I-95 was still a dream. Segments were finished, but there were long breaks of two-lane dirt construction. It was neither reliable nor complete as a North-South route. On many stretches we were the only subscribers. Not so in 1987. Between Washington and Richmond we encountered near-deadly congestion, not with our four-wheeled brethren, but that of the eighteen-wheeled type. I was like a mite among elephants — it could only have been more menacing for my poor wife and child in the Buick. It was white knuckles all the way. Then, an accident. Somewhere… For hours we sat stalled in the Virginia heat as our gas burned away and my daughter filled her pants. Glad that was in the Buick.

In oxen and Conestoga days the going was so slow the trailmasters had to factor in the seasons. This meant setting up a timetable which coincided with places. In other words, you didn’t want to be doing the Rockies in winter (the Donner Party is not just a reindeer’s birthday). One of the most important milestones on that schedule was a place called “Chimney Rock.” No, not the one in North Carolina, but the one at the butt-end of Nebraska. And if you weren’t there by the Fourth of July you would not cross the Rockies before winter.

What a sight this must have been for the old coonskinners. After endless weeks of trudging the vast flat plains, finally, terrain. The Indians had a more colorful name for this landmark but my mother’s probably going to read this, so I’ll let it drop. It is impressive, however — erect like an obelisk and visible for miles. On our route there was a similar location: that big sombrero at “South of the Border” on the North Carolina/South Carolina line. I have a colorful name for that place also: “Tacky Eyesore.” But you shore can’t miss it, and that’s where we decided to reconnoiter our own wagon train after leaving Fairfax.

It was an odd parley, this huge dilapidated sombrero. I guess it was a snack bar of some kind. Our engines echoed beneath the brim. The place was so big and dreary I couldn’t tell if it was open. “Pedro” had teased us for scores of miles: fireworks, food, gas, amusements, rooms… Why was this place so run-down? The sun was goldening and our daughter fidgety. Our decision was “Florence.” That’s where we’d make camp: Florence, South Carolina.

The ideal campground in the pioneer days had several requirements: level ground, peripheral visibility (to detect approaching hostiles, be they white or red), water, fuel, and ample room to circle the wagons and conduct a proper hoedown. A hoedown, you ask? Come on, you’ve seen “Wagon Train,” that endless ’50s western drama that chronicled the endless trials and tribulations of pioneers on the endless trail. In short, they never got where they were going because they were constantly waylaid by subplots. Sounds like everyday life, doesn’t it? And like anybody’s everyday life, we all need a cocktail hour. What better place than around the communal campfire, surrounded by wagons, fueled by jugs of whiskey and a Juilliard-class fiddler?

Florence, South Carolina is definitely level ground. For peripheral visibility we occupied a room on the second floor of the Days Inn. Water? There was a swimming pool! Fuel? Right at the corner. All we needed was to put the wagons in a circle and find stoke-juice for the hoedown.

The wagons-in-a-circle thing wasn’t going to work, not in this parking lot (and not with only two vehicles), and for a moment even the hoedown whiskey seemed in jeopardy. We couldn’t find a liquor store anywhere. So I drove thirty miles in that crummy truck to finally find a booze drive-through two exits back. Never take liquor for granted in the South.

The Conestogans most likely supped on bacon or rehydrated salt-beef and beans. We had similar fare, tastewise, something I like to call “McReflux.” A swim in the pool, then, in lieu of a fiddler we had television, enhanced by bourbon and motel ice. A hoedown indeed.

Little did I know that it would be a long time before I slept in another motel bed or peeled the wrapper from another greasy McReflux. The real adventure was just beginning.

Everybody’s heard of Wilbur and Orville Wright, right? You know, the guys who invented the airplane. Some say others invented it, but history books today credit the Wright boys with the first reusable airplane. They were the pioneers of air travel.

Now what if, on that blustery December day in 1903, after strapping himself onto that kite with a motor, Orville Wright suddenly changed his mind? What if, at the last minute, he said, “Hey, Willie (he called his brother “Willie”), let’s bag this flimsy bundle of bedsheets and go back to Ohio and fix bicycles like we’ve always done”?

You know what would have happened. Somebody else would have done it and the Wright brothers would have secured their not-so-lofty place in obscurity just like the rest of us schmucks. And after all that planning, all those trials, all that expense… After suffering all those skeptics… “Hey, Willie, let’s bag this.” What a letdown for all involved.

I’ve let people down in my life. I’ve walked out on jobs, on bands, on friends. Second thoughts are easy to conceive. The night before my own wedding I got drunk in a motel room with my brother. It was probably the booze, but suddenly this freezing bolt of panic hit me and I thought of running. Funny thing: my wife said she had the same experience. No, she wasn’t drunk. She was sitting in a hot bath. But she thought about it. Wouldn’t it have been funny if we’d run into each other at the airport, each holding a one-way ticket to Pago-Pago?

The coldest feet I ever had came in May 1987, when my family and I embarked on our final move to Florida. Like the Wright brothers, we’d spent years planning and suffering skeptics (“Yeah right, LaClaire, you’ll never leave here.”). We’d quit our jobs, cancelled our lease, sold off all that was unnecessary, and crammed everything else in a decrepit U-Haul with no first gear and a faulty radio (“skrrrxx, skrrrxx…”). Our bridges were burning brightly. I’d eaten my first and last Buffalo fajita, and there we were, standing in our empty apartment, about to turn in our keys. Panic.

The first colonists must have felt this way, having lived in the same town, the same country, eating the same cuisine, and enjoying the comfort of generations of family and friends, and then, after severing all those ties, facing the great unknown. What if the Pilgrims had said, “Hey, let’s bag this”? You know what would’ve happened. Instead of the Plymouth Fury, we’d probably be driving the Jamestown Fury. (Ahem…) Anyway, someone else would have gotten the credit. Confucius said that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Our first steps were downstairs. To the landlord’s. To turn in our keys. My wife, our baby and I crowded into the tiny alcove and rang their bell. This was hard. This was final. I was scared. The door creaked open.

“Hi, Mrs. — ”

I couldn’t get another word out. She began screaming at me. She was a tiny old lady, 80 years if a day. I didn’t know so small a package could pack such a wallop.

“What’s wrong with you people? You left the side door open all night! We could have been robbed! We could have been murdered! I could have been raped!” We had sold the washer and dryer the day before. Apparently, the buyers had left the door ajar. “Don’t you have any sense of responsibility? I could have woken up dead! I could have been raped!”

I looked at her tiny shriveled presence. In your dreams, lady. I handed over the keys. She kept yelling. “Irresponsible! That’s what you are! You never think of anybody else! I could have been raped! Murdered! Robbed!” My wife and daughter were already gone. I softly closed the door. “Raped! Murdered! Robbed!” I heard her all the way to the truck. In two years of tenancy we’d never exchanged a harsh word. I guess she’d been saving them up. All second thoughts on leaving evaporated. Goodbye, landlord. Goodbye, Buffalo. And good riddance.

The coonskin pioneers would begin their emigration with a muster. That is, they would gather. Ranks and rules having been defined, the initial leg of the journey was known as a shakedown. This was when you found out if your rig was sound. It also tested your commitment. We U-Haul pioneers had our shakedown.

Our first leg involved the Scajaquada Expressway, the New York State Thruway, State Route 400, and a somewhat hilly passage known as Route 16. Our mileage would have been a major feat in coonskin times. Conestogas, at a max, might make 12 miles per day. We’d covered 60 miles in less than an hour and a half. Regardless, our experience was still a shakedown.

I’d discovered this ancient truck was horrible on expressways. It was slow. It crowded the lane. Wind blew it around. And even though I was sitting way up high (so it seemed, compared to a car), the visibility was bad. I got lots of honks.

Hills were a new set of procedures. I spent five minutes trying to get into gear without stalling when traffic was stopped on a grade. This was embarrassing. People were honking, yelling. And that radio: skrrrxx, skrrrxx…

At last we’d reached our first destination: the in-laws’. I climbed down from my cab and banged the old beast on the fender. “Cheated death again,” I muttered and headed straight for the saloon — that is, my Father-In-Law’s built-in bar. My wife and baby had been there for 15 minutes (they drove the family Buick). I was greeted with, “What kept you?”

“Traffic was stalled on Route 16,” I half-lied. “Some jerk in a broke-down truck.”

I didn’t stay long at the bar. I needed to learn how to drive this thing, even if it meant practicing all night. And that’s about what I did. As soon as the dinner dishes were cleared I was back in the cab. For the next two hours I circled the neighborhood, clanging and grinding, in a desperate attempt to decipher the standard shift. I even parked it on a hill and tried to put it in gear. I don’t know why, but that skill kept eluding me. Finally I was satisfied, or at least sick of it, and resigned myself to take what the road may give.

I won’t say our departure the next morning was tearful, but it certainly was somber. At this point in our marriage, my wife and I possessed the first and only grandchild in the entire family. I suddenly felt selfish. Here we were, pursuing some half-baked dream while denying our in-laws the access to their greatest object of affection. There were promises to visit, to keep in touch, handshakes and hugs, and then we were off. It’s best to do these things quickly. It’s less painful. Or so I thought. A heavy sense of guilt fell upon me as the U-Haul lurched into gear. What would the coonskin crowd have done? Mail delivery was sketchy (that hasn’t changed). There was no long-distance telephone service then; no direct flights; not even buses or trains. A separation like this would’ve been final. Then I realized that in those days, the in-laws would have probably come along.

I pondered that scenario. We would have shared the same Conestoga. The women would have slept inside, up off the ground and the men beneath. We’d share every meal together. We’d work together, or try to. We’d have cholera together. And when we finally reached our Promised Valley, we’d probably spend at least a year together under the same roof, if not longer. Hey, I love my in-laws, but…

If there’s one thing to be said for driving an over-stuffed, under-geared antique U-Haul with a radio going skrrrxxx every six seconds, it’s that there’s never a dull moment. My depressed ponderings disappeared a mere five miles later. I was stuck. On a hill.

It wasn’t really a hill; it was a little hump over an intersecting street. But any obstacle is huge when you’ve no low gear. I was like, snagged. Five, then six times I started, only to flub the clutch and stall. A kid yelled from the corner; something about giving me a driving lesson. People honked. I needed to back up. Finally the guy behind gave me some rocking room. The gears engaged, and I was on my way.

There comes a point in every emigration where there’s no turning back. With the Pilgrims, it was the open sea (though one of their ships, the Godspeed, actually did turn back). With the coonskin types, it was the Mississippi. With us U-Haul pioneers it was a mere sign: “Welcome To Pennsylvania.” Now we were definitely on our way; committed, as it were.

Southward ho!

By the time you read this it will be July and summer.

I often write about the seasons in Florida. We do have them, contrary to popular belief, and though it might feel like May in January, there’s no way you’re going to confuse July with anything but July. It’s hot, and it’s gonna stay hot probably till November.

If we’re lucky, it rains every day. Yeah, I get sick of the rain too, but it sure beats a dry summer. Those mean only two things: record-breaking temperatures and fire.

I wonder what would have happened if our first Florida settlers had arrived for a “dry summer.” Would they have stayed? The crops they planted wouldn’t grow. There probably weren’t any fire departments; there would be the constant threat of being burned out. I wonder if they’d seen that, in their initial encounter with Florida, if they’d just figured “Hey, this place sucks” and headed back to… Well… Wherever it was they headed here from.

Anyone who leaves somewhere of their own volition has done so for a reason. Usually it’s economic, but it can also be the climate, politics, or even the neighbors. It can be a combination of these things too. Prime examples were America’s early emigrants, the pioneers, as it were. Most left their homes for the promise of free land and a place to make their own life. That’s economics. Some left to escape religious persecution or bigotry. That’s politics. Others left because of famine or crop failure. That’s climate. And probably a few split because a storm flattened their crops, a mob burned their church, and the neighbors played a continuous ear-splitting tape loop of “That’s the Way (I Like It)” by KC and the Sunshine Band. That’s economics, politics, climate, and bad neighbors. Regardless, they became our pioneers, the ones who risked everything to build a better life.

Unless you’re a member of the extinct Ais tribe, or were born in Florida, you too are a pioneer. I like that notion. The common image of the American Pioneer is the coonskin-hatted, rifle-totin’, buckskin-wearing, ox-driving, covered wagon pilot. It’s time to shatter the stereotype. If you went anywhere to escape something and make a better life, in my opinion, you’re a pioneer.

So there. I’m a pioneer. Let’s compare Now with Then and see how I stack up.

First, you gotta be from somewhere else and you gotta have a reason to leave. Okay, I used to live in Buffalo, New York. Do I need to list reasons? Just kidding… Buffalo, to the folks born there, is the only place in the world to be. When I announced to my landlord that I was moving to Florida, her immediate reaction was: “Oh! I’m so sorry! You have to leave Buffalo!” But I was not born there. Those ties were not that hard to cut. My reasons for leaving were two: I was going to start my own business and I was going to do it where there was better fishing. Now that’s not to say the fishing in Western New York was bad, I’d had plenty of fun, but in Florida you could fish year round. So there are the reasons: economics and climate.

Once the decision is made, the pioneer must pack and provision. This involves choosing what to bring that you already have and what to purchase to get you there. The buckskin crowd would gather the Bible, the muskets, a stick of furniture, and maybe a hand mirror and hook up with an outfitter or trail master. Provisions such as bacon, hard tack, and dried beans would be loaded into the U-Haul of its day, the covered wagon, or more succinctly, the Conestoga wagon. Have you ever seen one of these things? I have. They’re pretty hefty, about twenty feet long, and built like a ship. Big iron-rimmed wooden wheels and no suspension nearly guaranteed a bumpy ride—kinda like a U-Haul! And that’s what my family packed for our great migration: a U-Haul, the Conestoga wagon of the 1980s. And like a Conestoga wagon, the U-Haul was barely equipped.

Over the phone I was promised a recent model, automatic shift, A/C, and AM/FM/cassette sound system. I was psyched. I’d never driven a truck before, at least not for 1,500 miles, and the fact that all would be up-to-date was reassuring. They had my deposit a month in advance.

I remember the scene well. They tossed me the keys and I strode into the lot. This beast was 30-years-old. There was paint missing, an oil puddle beneath, and the seat was covered with what looked like chicken wire. “That’s to keep the springs from stickin’ you in the butt,” the trail master — I mean, the clerk — said. No A/C. AM radio. And worst of all, a stick on the floor. “I can’t drive this,” I admitted.

“You can’t drive a standard? What are you, retarded?”

“Uh, yeah — I mean, no! I just, well… Yeah, I’m retarded.”

“You want your money back?”

“Well… They told me automatic, A/C, AM/FM… ”

“Who’d you talk to?”

“I booked it through the main office. Phoenix… ”

“This ain’t Phoenix. It’s Buffalo.”

“Believe me, I know.”

“You want your money back?”

We’d sold almost all our furniture. We had two days left on our lease. Everything was in boxes on the porch. “No,” I sighed. “I have to take it. Can you… I never… ”

“Aw hell,” the guy laughed. “Everybody learns on these things. You’ll get the hang of it!”

Yeah, I got the hang of it. I also learned it had no first gear, but soon I was barreling down the Niagara Extension, anticipating the wife’s reaction. The pioneers used oxen, for the most part, to haul their Conestogas. If things got real bad on the trail, you could eat an ox.

Even if a 1956 GMC oil-bath air filter V8 was edible, I wasn’t about to eat this one. This truck was a turd. Even the AM radio — the only amenity — was a bust. Every six seconds, no matter what channel, it emitted a loud skrrxxx. I jiggled the knobs. Skrrxxx! I banged on the metal dash. Skrrxxx! One of the euphemisms the early pioneers had for their experience was “Seeing the Elephant.” I was riding one.

Have you ever been on the verge of something — a great adventure like going off to college, or marriage, or a new job — and suddenly wanted to rethink it? Maybe even … back out?

I’ve had my share of life-changing precipices — all the above and more — but the “rethink” urge never came on as strong as it did the afternoon we left Buffalo in May, 1987. My last meal in the Queen City on that day was lunch. One thing Buffalo did have was a plethora of great eating establishments. And on this day, our last day, we discovered a brand new one. It was the first time I ever sampled a fajita. Don’t laugh folks, but that fancy taco almost changed the course of my history. The truck was loaded, the last of our furniture had been sold, and we were waiting for the baby to finish her nap before turning in the keys. We sat on the floor of our bare kitchen and my wife said: “Why don’t you go down to the corner and pick up something for lunch?”

Sadness fell upon me as I walked our street to Hertel Avenue. It was a beautiful day, a weekday. I was never home on weekdays. The lawns were green, the trees were lush, and neighbors smiled as I passed. Why would I ever want to leave this place? Shortly I was amid the bustle of Hertel Avenue, with its bars, bistros, and boutiques. I could smell souvlaki, garlic, and sausages mingled with “that old Detroit perfume” (car exhaust), and for the first time in ten years I felt at home in that city. Here was a bar my band used to play in. There’s where I bought my olives every Thursday. Here was my bus stop. There was my newsstand. And there… There… Was a fajita joint. It wasn’t there a week ago. Hmm…

The owner was a kid. Or at least he looked like a kid to me; maybe twenty-five. He had that eager look of a first-time entrepreneur. “What’ll it be?” he greeted.

“What’s good?” I’d never had a fajita before. I didn’t even know how to pronounce it.

“It’s all good,” he urged. “Order the beef.”

I did. As the meat sizzled, I looked around. “This used to be a music store,” I commented.

“And a sausage packer before that,” the kid added. “Got a beautiful clean room in the back. My Dad worked here.”

Peppers and onions hit the griddle. The smell was intoxicating. I wondered if I would ever smell it again. “I bought strings here just a year ago.” There was one of those old glass stand-up coolers stocked with Canadian beer. I wondered if I would ever taste that again. The meat was flipped, the whole shebang was herded into soft shells and wrapped deftly in deli paper.

“Onions too strong, maybe?” the kid asked as I fished a couple of bills from my wallet.

“No… Why?”

“Your eyes… They’re watering.”

My first fajita.

It was delicious.

How could I leave this place?

Gardening 102: Tomatoes
By Rick LaClaire

Melbourne Harbor was a different environment years ago. It was a working harbor; boats were hauled and fitted, sails were stitched, and a number of people (myself included) managed to squeeze a few bucks out of that place. I learned the difference between garboards and leeboards, ship’s logs and shaft logs, a transit and a transom. I got to know the cats and the bums and where to hang when your stomach was growling. Those were wonderful days, and the friends we made are friends still.

Buffalo and Melbourne have some things in common. Water is everywhere. So are boats. When my wife and I returned to Buffalo in 1981, our first attraction was to the many marinas. There were great buys to be had. That became our goal: to buy a live-aboard yacht, fix it up, and sail her back to Florida.

We perused issues of Yachting and Sailing. I bought every copy of Wooden Boat on the newsstand. I even bought a kit and built my own canoe on our apartment balcony (the landlord was not pleased). We borrowed books from the library and saw how people lived aboard worldwide. Then my wife gave me a book called “Sailing the Farm” by Ken Neumeyer. It touted “independence on thirty feet” and was supposed to be “A survival guide to homesteading on the ocean.” We were hooked.

I learned you could eat seaweed. You could live on sprouts, preserved eggs, and something called “spirulina.” You could even grow a garden in containers. Right on your deck! Why, that was almost like having your own garden right on your — dare I say — apartment balcony? And so we became urban gardeners. And that’s when we learned about late blight.

It was hot on that balcony. It faced south. By summer the spinach and lettuce had dried up. The chives were next to go. The tomatoes looked great though, as long as you kept them watered. We had a few cherries, then the blooms began to drop. The beefsteak specimens had gorgeous green globes, and slowly, as the summer wore on, they began to pale and appear to ripen. Then, a slight blush. Then… Then… What the heck was this? A black spot. On the very bottom. No matter. It’s small. No, wait… Now it’s not. Aw, gee, it’s only August and what gives? Pretty soon half the fruit was black. We had discovered late blight. But how could that be? It wasn’t that late! It was the heat. A south facing porch, a steel deck, white siding reflecting the sun; it was an oven out there. We had picked the wrong place to grow.

No matter. We’ll try other varieties. A different side of the house… There had to be some way to grow fresh veggies while we sailed the world. Our lives would depend on it. We got into sprouts big-time and grew them all winter. We ate them with everything. I ruined Thanksgiving dinner by putting them in the dressing (yes, we had company). It made the whole bird taste like lawn clippings. Also, be careful with radish sprouts. They burn at both ends. Okay, sprouts get tiresome and veggies don’t handle tropical heat. Was there anything else that could stop us from realizing our dream of living aboard in complete and utter independence? Yep. We had a baby.

Cut now to 1996, Melbourne Beach, Florida. September 21st, the first day of autumn… Ninety-two degrees… It would be tomatoes-only this season. I would stare down the “Jane Kaczmarek Challenge” and grow enough tomatoes to feed all the boat people I knew. And you know what? In 1996, I did.

’96 was probably the best season I ever had with Florida tomatoes. After two seasons of trying to grow full-size northern varieties like Beefsteaks, I was advised by a radio talk show to try a smaller, faster-ripening breed like “Better Boy.” It made sense; my cherry tomatoes flourished. So in ’96 I planted a dozen Better Boy plants. That was a big crop, and coupled with two Sweet 100 cherry bushes, I soon had buckets of tomatoes. For a Christmas Eve party that year I brought a three-quart bowl of vine-ripened cherries. They were gone in twenty minutes. The Better Boys began ripening soon after. It was a forgiving winter ’96-’97 and we had Better Boys from New Year’s till Easter; not just for ourselves, but also for neighbors, friends, and customers. I even shipped a couple dozen to my mother and anxiously awaited her verdict. “They’re okay,” she said, “but not as good as the ones we grew in New York.” I knew she was right, but was proud anyway. How many tomatoes were New Yorkers picking at that time of year?

I also had good advice from my neighbor Jerry. Jerry lived beachside for decades and had gone through his own tomato phase. He claimed the old-timers grew vegetables in pits lined with marl, filled with cow manure and peat moss. That made sense. What’s marl? So in ’96, pits it was. Was I actually starting to listen to advice? That was so unlike me. But hey, there I was at the post office shipping tomatoes to my mother. …After having a tomato and cheese omelet for breakfast …Then going home to a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich for lunch…

I got bad advice, too. I got this from a book on Florida gardening: mulch. Don’t mulch here. It breeds nematodes. Use amendments every season instead (manure and peat moss). Yeah, mulch is cheap and it’s a great way to recycle your yard waste, but the things that make mulch mulch will also eat the roots off your plants. Up north they have freezes every year. That keeps the mulch-making nematodes in check. We can go a decade without a freeze here. Each season they just keep multiplying. They love tomato roots.

There are lots of leaf and fruit eaters. Everybody’s seen tomato hornworms. I found the best way to get rid of them naturally was to check the plants with a flashlight at night. They hide well, but you get the hunter’s eye pretty quick. Just look for turds, then look up. They get so big you can hear them chewing. There are lots of nifty frogs out at night too. Leave them alone. Another planteater is the orange-head, a medium-sized caterpillar. You can pick them too, but they get pretty numerous. So do leaf-girdlers and leaf-rollers. Soon it gets out of hand and the next thing you know, out comes the insecticide.

I don’t like using chemicals, but this is Florida. Tomatoes are not native. You need all the help you can get, natural or unnatural. I tried going “natural” with insecticide. The same book that told me to mulch said you could make a multi-purpose insecticide by using a “tea” made with tobacco. After all, the book claimed, many insecticides were tobacco-based. So I steeped-up a gallon of Red Man and proceeded to spray. It did nothing. Apparently, beachside caterpillars don’t mind a good chaw. I only have one more word about insects: Sevin. And spray the soil…

’97-’98 saw another good crop and I was so psyched I tried a summer crop. More bad advice… Someone at Mao Mart said to grow Romas, those pear-shaped beauties from Italy. I planted in May. Yeah, they popped right up, and looked great. Then we took a week’s vacation in New York. The neighbor kids were supposed to water them for me. They swore they did, but all the plants were dead in a week. There were also signs of late blight. Things started going downhill. With each season the yield shrank. By 2000 I was no longer giving them away. We were lucky to get one or two a week for the table by ’04. Cherries, yeah, but you get sick of cherries; you can’t put them on a sandwich. The problem? Nematodes. I even replaced the soil two years in a row. By ’08 I couldn’t get the plants to reach maturity; they just shriveled, choked off at the roots. I tried Nemacide, and it worked for a few weeks but soon lost its oomph. Then they quit making Nemacide.

My last crop was ’09-’10. Again, no yield, due mainly to the weather. We finally got those long-awaited freezes. Last fall I did not plant. I’m giving it a rest. I’m glad I did. I would have lost it all by December.

So there you go, Jane Kaczmarek, I have witnessed failure. Will I plant again? Of course. Because failure is part of the game. Right, Jane?

By Rick LaClaire

“I like to watch things suffer and die slowly. That’s why I garden.” — Spoony Spoonicus

By now, everyone has seen the TV series “Malcolm In The Middle.” You can’t miss it. It’s on four times a day. Whether it’s lunch, breakfast or suppertime, if you flick the TV on for company, there it is. Since I usually eat breakfast and lunch by myself, I’ve seen the episodes many times over. The first season was the best. Then, like any other TV series, it degrades season after season until mercifully, it’s pulled.

Unlike most sitcoms though, “Malcolm” didn’t disintegrate as completely as, say, “All In The Family” or “M.A.S.H.”. This, I believe, was due to its consistent cast and their dedication to fine acting. It was most evident in Bryan Cranston, who played the father and went on to star in the acclaimed series “Breaking Bad,” which if you haven’t seen, you should; it was one of the most unique television series ever, on par with “The Sopranos” and “Mad Men.”

Now, I know what you’re saying: “LaClaire, you watch too much TV, and what does ‘Malcolm In The Middle’ have to do with gardening?” Well, it’s like this. After so many years of seeing Malcolm and family on the tube, you begin to feel as if you know these people personally. Every time one of their faces appears in another presentation, you are compelled to watch, and usually compelled to approve. Why? Because you have become a fan. The same goes for any printed material about these people. And so it was with Jane Kaczmarek (Lois, on the show) who gave an interview some time ago stating that she grows tomatoes for diversion. Tomatoes? For diversion!?! That’s what she said, or at least implied. She also said that you have to be prepared to fail. Amen!

My mother grew the best tomatoes on this planet. I used to pick them when they were still warm from the sun and eat them like an apple, sometimes with a couple of shakes of salt. We would have so many she would can them, and in the midst of a cold New York winter they were welcome indeed, almost as good as from the vine. Late August, early September, I could always count on a case of “tomato-itis,” which was a mild bowel disorder from too many tomatoes. It was very similar to the “collywobbles,” which was an affliction brought on by too many crabapples. It’s not to be confused with “Wing’s Disease” though, which is an acute, singular event, brought on by a mix of multiple draft beers and hot Buffalo wings. For that disorder, I am still involved in the research and development of a non-melting ice-cube suppository.

College, marriage, a job in the city… An apartment lifestyle doesn’t lend itself to gardening, but my wife and I attempted anyway. We were soon introduced to the concept of container gardening, and began growing our own salads on our balcony. Well, maybe salads is not the right term; perhaps a salad is more accurate. In the one season we nursed cherry tomatoes, spinach and bib lettuce in the stifling carbon monoxide of Buffalo; we may have eked enough for a single appetizer. Once the cherries ripened they were popped immediately into the mouth, and most of the bib lettuce was used to decorate tuna sandwiches. We also discovered a malignancy known as “late blight,” which greatly shortened our harvest window. But what the heck, we tried, and soon were introduced to Ms. Kaczmarek’s “failure” concept.

As soon as I bought this pile of rocks I call my beachside residence, I began making way for a garden. There was a concrete sidewalk leading from the side door to the driveway, enclosing a patch of soil roughly four by twenty feet — a perfect tomato patch. It being June when we moved in, all I did at that time was turn the soil and add amendments (lawn clippings and manure). By September I was ready to plant, hoping for a winter crop. I’d had no instruction on Florida gardening and was essentially shooting from the hip. But you know, even if someone had tried to teach me, I probably wouldn’t have listened anyway. I was now a homeowner, a member of the “landed gentry,” and nobody was going to tell me what to do. After all, my mother grew the best tomatoes on the planet in Northern New York — as harsh an environment as was ever created — what’s to know? There was one piece of advice I did adhere to though: keep a journal.

I can’t find it. I put it in that place where you put things so you’ll always remember where you put them, and naturally, I can’t find it. Someday I’m going to open a door in this place and all that stuff is going to fall on me. And then I won’t remember why I kept it.

That journal would sure come in handy. I’d like to know what the hell I was thinking when I first decided to put seeds in this ratty-ass barrier island soil. I only kept it for two years, and it was basically a chronicle of when I planted, what I planted, and where. Like I wouldn’t know the difference between a wax bean and a pea… I experimented a lot then. I tried cantaloupe, strawberries, bell peppers, Swiss chard, spinach, onions… Each succumbed to one malady or another, and I soon learned this place was full of maladies.

Things sprouted and grew okay, which was a surprise considering this soil is 99% sand. Even after amending it with a hundred pounds of cow crap, this stuff was so porous that any trace of organic matter was percolated out with each rain. But if it was kept watered — with city water, not artesian — the plants looked healthy and put out foliage. Miss a day of watering though, and, well…

I remember watering knee-high bracts of Swiss chard one evening and finding every leaf skeletonized by some unseen herbivore next morning. I recall checking my onions by pulling a bulb only to find a half-inch hole perfectly bored through the center, then pulling another, and another, and another, finding they all had the same hole. I found that stinkbugs love bell peppers, and all they have to do is pierce the skin of the fruit to rot it. If strawberries touch the ground, something eats the bottoms off them. Cantaloupes attract a worm that eats the rind. Don’t even bother with peas; you need an acre of those to fill a soup pan.

But I did have luck with three crops that season: spinach, wax beans, and yup, you guessed it, tomatoes. I grew Sweet 100 cherries to die for. The bigger tomatoes were another story. They had to be watered almost constantly, and when they finally ripened — even though red and plump — they were nowhere near as good as Mom’s. They were mealy and tasteless.

The spinach was a godsend. It came up fast, loved this sandy loam, and put forth sheaf after sheaf of dark green nutty crispness. Boy was it good. Tossed in a salad, or better yet, layered on an egg-salad sandwich, we reveled in it. I vowed to grow more, and tried. I could never get another crop. Something else decided it liked spinach more than we.

Now wax beans are another story. They, too, love this place. We had wax beans out our ears. These things were eight, ten inches long; fat and juicy. But let me ask you a question: how many wax beans can you eat?

After two years of assorted crops — their progress noted in some lost journal — I began to focus. I would accept what I have now come to call the “JKC”: the Jane Kaczmarek Challenge. I would concentrate on tomatoes. I would plant and fail, plant and fail, until I could find a variety, season, and method that would afford me tomatoes like Mom used to make. I would grow so many I would give them away to my neighbors and friends. I would grow so many I would can them, just like Mom.

I might even ask someone for help.

Well, maybe…

MY PERSONAL GRAMMYS
By Rick LaClaire

From the time I was a teenager, and until my early 30s, my goal was to be a musician. Not a rock star, per se, but a respected singer and songwriter. Rock stars were meat puppets, in my opinion. They were clothes-hangers and “frontmen,” mere purveyors of the actual art. The art was in the writing, and I began very young.

From the get-go, I eschewed anything glitzy. My guitars were old, cheap, and beat-up. I wore jeans and t-shirts when I performed. No smoke bombs or props. Even our light show was cheesy. I had something to say and didn’t need visuals to clutter the message. Mostly, that message was: “I’m lonely and no one understands me.”

Of course I wanted to impress girls, especially as a teenager. I couldn’t do it on the athletic field, and I couldn’t do it with my devastating good looks, so I chose a more cerebral route: I was going to be deep. Did it work? Yes and no. Yes, I got dates and a second glance, but no, I wasn’t what you would consider a ladykiller. That title went to the athletes and rock stars.

Rock stars had sound systems. Our amps had cracked speakers. Rock stars had groupies. The girls I attracted were much like me: lonely and misunderstood. Rock stars snorted coke and drank champagne. We were into Marlboros and quarts of Schlitz. Rock stars arrived in a bus with the band’s name on the side. We packed all our homely gear in a Saab and a ’62 Buick.

College brought contact with some truly talented musicians. When my school days were done, we continued playing. For eleven years I played the bars. Hooked up with an indie label in Buffalo, N.Y. Made records. Got to do a couple concerts as an opening act. Did interviews, in print and on the air. Made a music video. Sold a song… I guess I was a rock star and didn’t even know it.

No, I didn’t get rich. I didn’t get famous. Never had groupies… But yeah, it was fun. I stopped when I started to feel foolish. I was chasing an unattainable goal and I chose Buffalo as the place to play it out. Rock stars went to New York or L.A. But I didn’t want to be a rock star. I just wanted to be a musician.

Writing songs, recording songs, learning other people’s music to flesh out a set list; these things gave me a certain slant on the songs I hear every day. Even now, decades after my “rock star” days, I tend to deconstruct music when I hear it. After six years of analog recording in Buffalo and another three of digital here in Florida, I can pretty much tell how a song was put together in one listen. I’m sure anyone who records does the same thing, and at first I found it annoying. Now I find it fun. I also feel it qualifies my opinion. And that’s all you can really have with music: an opinion. Music, like all art, is neither good nor bad, it’s just music. What tickles my fancy might make you throw up. But like anything acceptable, the quality of effort put forth greatly affects the end product.

It is February as I write this, and on the thirteenth of this month the music industry will once again gather to pat itself on the back with the 53rd Grammy Awards. Had I ever been nominated for a Grammy I would probably have a different opinion, but I’ve always viewed this as pretty silly and never pay it much mind. As I stated, I like what I like and no award is going to sway me. But what if every listener could grant his own awards, and in categories he or she picks? And why limit it to one year? I say let’s make the playing field a lot broader by including popular recorded music from many decades. And let’s start with categories like this:

The Best Year For Rock Music: In my opinion the award goes to 1982, with 1978 a close second. ’78 saw Punk turn into New Wave with emergent acts like Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson, Talking Heads, and The Cars. Punk was a breath of fresh air after the mindlessness of Disco, and New Wave made it more listenable. ’82 saw those acts mature and included newcomers like Men At Work, Culture Club, Wall Of Voodoo, Berlin — it seemed like every day there was a new act, a new sound. ’82 also saw a resurgence in rock’s roots. Cases in point: Stray Cats, The Blasters, and Los Lobos. It was suddenly like, “anything goes.”

Rock’s Most Unique Act: The Doors. Listen to the song “Strange Days.” Morrison whispers the lyrics over the main vocal. Nobody ever sounded like those guys, before or since.

A Lifetime Achievement Award for the First Heavy Metal Band: Blue Cheer. Rumor had it they were so loud they recorded their first single in a boathouse — no studio would accommodate them. And this was in 1966! Eat your hearts out, Black Sabbath. You can have my copy of Vincebus Eruptum, but first you’ll have to pry it from my cold, dead fingers.

The Best Two Songs In A Row On Vinyl: The Beatles’ Yesterday and Today LP, side two: “And Your Bird Can Sing” followed by “If I Needed Someone.”

Worst Follow-Up Album By A Major Act: Tusk by Fleetwood Mac. I wasn’t a big fan of these guys, but I never saw a band fall off the face of the earth so sharply.

Second Worst Follow-Up Album: Thick As A Brick, Jethro Tull. Reading the cover was more interesting than listening to the music. But how could you follow Aqualung? Especially after an ascendancy like Stand Up and Benefit?

Worst Single Ever: This is my favorite question. I have asked this of dozens of people my age and it usually boils down to two: “MacArthur Park” by Richard Harris and “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen. Both these songs were huge hits in their day, which also means somebody thought they were pretty good. I would like to meet those people (and herd them into a storage container for shipment to Pago-Pago). Every now and then some erudite DJ will pose this same question. Many of the answers are hilarious and I tend to agree with almost all of them, but when it comes down to a final decision I have to place myself in the “Bohemian Rhapsody” camp. I suppose it’s unfair, in a way. I have only listened to the song all the way through once. I never could stand to do it again. It is said that Queen was two different bands: a studio band and a live band. Supposedly their live show was just their rock songs, the opera-like stuff was reserved for vinyl only. I dunno… I had no desire to hear “Fat-Bottomed Girls” in any context.

Most Talented One-Hit Wonder: Seatrain with “Thirteen Questions.” Yeah, the Doors were unique but so were these guys, especially for 1970, which was when rock was getting a bit stale due to corporatization. Sea Train did leave its mark though, the great picker Peter Rowan, a driving force in West Coast folk rock. He wrote “Panama Red” (one of my college anthems) and was a member of Old and In the Way, a group that helped popularize the new Bluegrass movement in the ’70s.

Coolest Album Cover: Osibisa by Osibisa. Their music sounded like Santana meets the Pygmies (“criss-cross rhythms that explode with happiness”), but what a cover by Roger Dean. Elephants with insect wings… Waaay trippy… Yeah, I bought it for the cover. I was only 17 and soon discovered I didn’t appreciate African rock yet. I’ll have to dig that out and give it another listen — or at least a look. Dean went on to do tons of album covers for bands as diverse as Yes, Uriah Heep, and Budgie.

Worst Album Cover? The so-called “White Album” by The Beatles. You can’t argue with that. The only thing worse than a bad effort is no effort at all. It was the first double album I’d ever seen. And why? In my opinion they could have dumped half the cuts anyway. It’s almost like they were too lazy to edit as well as too lazy to come up with an acceptable cover.

Best Debut Album: Dire Straits by Dire Straits, from my second favorite rock year, 1978. Not a bad cut on the platter.

Best Live Band: The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Seeing is believing. They have so much fun playing that you can’t help but catch it. They’re good, too!

All right, now here’s the Big Award, the one everybody wants to know:

The Best Make-Out Album Of All Time: There are lots of “good” ones: The James Gang, Thirds… Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin… Country Joe and the Fish, CJ Fish… Leo Kottke, Greenhouse… But there’s only one BEST: that has to be none other than Avalon by Roxy Music. Try and keep your pants on during that one.

I’m sure that not everyone will agree with these opinions, in fact I’m sure that no one will completely. I’d sure love to hear your ideas. My editor probably would too. He loves feedback; it means somebody’s reading this thing!

Pot ‘O Gold
By Rick LaClaire

As my readership (Hi, Mom!) alreaady knows, I do not sleep well. At my age this is a common malady, exacerbated by a shrinking bladder and an annoying recurrence of something called “acid reflux.” I have also heard it referred to as acid reflux disease, but I find that description a bit harsh. To me, a disease is something you haplessly blunder into; something you catch. Acid reflux is basically self-induced (What? You mean tequila and birthday cake don’t mix?), and it was that affliction which drove me from my sheets a few days ago, gasping for breath.

What a lousy way to wake up. On fire from paunch to palate, jerked upright with the worst taste in the world in your mouth, flailing the nightstand for the Tums. ‘Course then, once you’re up, you have to pee. On go the blinding bathroom lights and they induce a sneezing fit.  This one’s for the boys: have you ever tried to pee during a sneezing fit? Not a pretty sight.

After breathing flames, blowing your nose and mopping the wall, sleep becomes elusive. It being a weekend night, I figured I’d stay up and read till I got sleepy again. But then, what the heck, there sits the tube and remote — why not take the couch potato route?

There’s not much on television at 2:30 in the morning. You can get yelled at by religious people, yelled at by appliance salesmen, yelled at by pitchmen hawking bathroom cleaner, or yelled at by somebody cooking a chicken in what looks like an old mimeograph machine. I don’t watch TV to be yelled at. I want escape. And finally, after four full minutes of being yelled at, I found it on the “Cheesy Western Channel” (CWC, for short): back-to-back episodes of “Bonanza” till dawn.

What about “Bonanza” does not cry out “escape”? It’s got everything. You have three sons, a paw, a Chinaman, and scads of horses, ensconced firmly upon the glittering waters of Lake Tahoe. Supposedly they raise cows, but I’ve never seen one on the show. Maybe they’re raising something else… Supposedly, Ben Cartwright made his fortune at sea, outlived three wives and then bought two-thirds of the Wild West. Something fishy there. How come his wives keep dying? How do you make money at sea? Smuggling? Piracy? How do you segue from seafaring to animal husbandry? They do not relate. Lots of unanswered questions here, Ben.

I’ve assailed “Bonanza” before (see The Beachside Resident, July 2008: “AC/TV”). My readership (Hi Mom!) is already keenly aware of the fact that they never change their clothes and never eat Chinese (couldn’t Hop Sing put the Kung Pao on a cow?). My favorite “Bonanza” episode is the one where Adam wears black, Little Joe shmoozes a girl, and Hoss says “Dad-burn it, Paw.” (Old joke…) Anyway, the episode I caught on this particular foray had to do with leprechauns. Have you seen it? The boys are out poking cows or whatever they do on that ranch and Hoss starts seeing Little People. Of course everyone thinks he’s been sampling the local cactus, but a veritable gold rush occurs as all the neighborhood cowboys invade the Ponderosa attempting to capture a leprechaun with hopes of getting their hands on the ubiquitous pot o’ gold. Madcap slapstick ensues, but I will not reveal the outcome. That is not the point. The point is that the entire metropolis of Virginia City is turned upside down while everyone scrambles for a quick buck. Except of course Ben Cartwright — he’s already rich as Croesus from his piracy/smuggling/wife-killing/cow-poking days, and doesn’t need to.

What if you really did stumble upon a pot of gold? How would you handle it? I’m of the opinion that when you really go looking for something, you don’t usually find it. Like buying lottery tickets, dropping coins in a slot, guessing at beans in a jar — you never win; at least I don’t. But then you’ll just be walking along and, well… Like the time I found a pot of gold.

Actually, it was silver, not gold. And it wasn’t in a pot. It was in a gutter. Loose. Thousands of pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters just laying there. I was on my morning walk and happened to look down and there they were.

Now were this pile of money in someone’s yard or driveway, I would have kept walking. But this was fair game in my opinion. It was in the gutter of a public street. No man’s land… No, I did not dive on it, even though it looked like a few score bucks. I let it go that first day, because I wanted to make sure I gave the owner a chance to reclaim his loss. Two days later, on my next walk, it was still there. Hmmm… I gave it two more. Bingo, still there, and this time I bent and filled my pockets with all the quarters I could find. This was nine or ten bucks worth and it almost pulled my shorts down with the weight. I jingled all the way home.

Two days later the pile was still there, minus the quarters, naturally. I stuffed my pockets with dimes. There were hundreds. I wore a belt that morning, so’s not to moon the dog-walkers. This was just too easy.

I hoisted the nickels on my next walk. How come no one else had found this? Maybe other people are too proud to bend for change. I’m not. Especially when there’s so much. I stopped at the bank that day, not to deposit but to get coin wrappers. I asked for extra penny rolls.  There had to be a of couple thousand of those in the pile. That would be my next quest, and for it I rolled up a Crown Royal bag and stuffed it in my gym shorts. I was going to clean the gutter.

It didn’t happen. Someone had beat me to the pennies. Not a big deal, I’d already harvested the meat of the pile. But so ended that Pot O’ Gold — or Pot O’ Copper by this point. I hope a kid found it. The fact that someone found it at all made me feel guilty; maybe it was the person who lost it. Such is luck: someone wins, someone loses,  right? That’s what I tried to tell myself.

I once knew a guy who found two hundred bucks on a barroom floor. That was a lot of money in 1974. He was broke, a barfly who owed everybody money and immediately wanted to pay everybody back. A nightlong bar crawl ensued, and our host paid for everything. We’d finally hit every bar in town and were back at the bar where he’d found the money. It was closing time and ours was the only table still drinking. A distraught college coed interrupted our brew-ha, tears streaming, and inquired if any of us had seen a packet with $200 — it was her monthly paycheck from a work/study job, and all she had to live on. That was a buzzkill, to say the least. Our host produced the envelope and apologized. There was only $40 left. Lessons were learned on both sides that night: if it’s not yours, it’s not yours; and pay attention to where you put your money.

My next pot of gold was neither monetary nor metallic. It was plastic, vinyl to be precise. You may recall the gift my sister gave me last year, a rack of old 45s from the ’50s and early ’60s (see The Beachside Resident July, 2010: “Big Sis”). In retrospect, that too was a pot of gold, but I found another, right here in my house.

It seems that some time ago my father-in-law was cleaning out the closets in the old homestead and he too came across a stack of 45s. They were shipped in an old “train case” — you know what I’m talking about; one of those small, deep suitcases with a mirror on the inside of the cover (also known as an “overnighter”). The records, being concealed in luggage like this, went unnoticed. The bag had been moved from pillar to post and never opened. Well, the other day, while searching for something else, I opened it. It’s been kicking around so long, we don’t even remember when or if it was sent. We might have carried it ourselves, we don’t recall. But what a treasure trove it is!

There’s a good hundred discs in that train case, all classics from the late ’60s to about 1972. It’s Beatles mostly, with some Creedence, the Mamas and Papas, and the Rolling Stones scattered amongst for good measure. Got some real classics in this pile, too. “Spirit In the Sky” by Norman Greenbaum, “Abraham, Martin and John” by Dion, “Eight Miles High” by the Byrds…. And of course some clinkers: Bobby Sherman, the Monkees, Herman’s Hermits… The funny thing is, this collection seems to pick up right where my sister’s collection ends. So I’m good from about 1956 to 1972, almost the entire length of my childhood. A pot of gold, indeed!

Now I need to find an old jukebox. I’d love to have these things all together, ripe for spinning. Think I’ll find one in the gutter or the back of a closet? Probably not. But I’ll keep my eyes open.

Who says leprechauns don’t exist?

GROUNDHOG’S DAY
By Rick LaClaire

Behold, the armadillo. Is there a more incongruous-looking beast? Claws like a mole. Skin like a reptile. A face like a possum and a tail like a pay phone cable. It’s as if a clown designed it on a bet. A strange diet to boot: worms, slugs, and bugs. They’ll even eat fire ants (spicy, I’ll bet).

Armadillos are not Florida natives. Decades ago, a few managed to escape a circus sideshow in Cocoa. Apparently they liked Florida, because now they’re all over the place. But is it me, or does it seem there are fewer of these creatures than there used to be? I recall seeing dozens of them in the median of I-95 in the early 80s. Now the only ones I see are squashed in the road. Which leads me to an interesting tidbit about armadillo behavior: when alarmed, they jump straight up, about a foot or so… which is the exact height of a car bumper. Kind of like Whack-A-Mole with automobiles.

They have other unique traits as well. They contract leprosy. They dig holes all over the place. And if buzzards are any judges of fine dining, they must taste good. I was once stuck in traffic on a two-lane stretch in West Melbourne. My window was down, and not four feet away I watched a buzzard wrench the eyeball out of one. It swallowed it with relish, then finagled the other socket. It was like watching a train wreck; disgusting, but I couldn’t turn away. That image haunts me to this day. Armadillos may or may not be gourmet fare, but their eyeballs… Ahem.

As odd and uninvited as they are, the lowly “Hoover Hog,” as the armadillo was known during the Depression, may have a place in Sunshine State ecology. They eat harmful grubs and move the soil. Up North, another “hog” occupies the soil-mover niche — the ubiquitous groundhog. And other than the fact that these two mammals dig holes, all remaining similarities end. The armadillo is in the, uh… Uh… Well, I’m not sure what animal family the armadillo is in. The weirdoids? But I do know this: the groundhog is a rodent, and a rather large one at that.

We knew them as woodchucks. Some called them gophers (wrongly) or marmots. My favorite colloquialism for the groundhog was “Whistle Pig.” Because they whistle, believe it or not, when alarmed. I’m not sure where the pig or hog name comes from. They look nothing like them, though at times they are fat. Perhaps they taste like pork; I wouldn’t know. The Indians ate a lot of them, that’s for sure. They ate more groundhog than venison, according to archaeological findings. I wonder how they caught them. Once the whistle goes off, they disappear like smoke. And they are very wary.

Farmers hated them. They ravenously ate hay, vegetables, corn seedlings, and the cobs themselves. But worse, they dug their burrows. All over the place. Cattle would supposedly blunder into them and break their legs. Every dairy cow I’ve ever seen always had its nose in the clover. I don’t see how they could miss spying a deadly chuckhole. Regardless, it gave us kids a reason to shoot ‘em. And that we did.

I was introduced to the princely sport of woodchuck hunting by my neighbor, Trooper Don. Trooper was a cop, a bona fide New York State Trooper, and was a lot of fun to know. He was young for a grown-up, had great stories, and loved to shoot. His favorite quarry was woodchucks. He had a wonderful rifle: a scoped bolt-action .222. This is where I will probably lose my non-hunting readership (Hi, Mom!). But I urge you to read on.

Trooper Don taught me how to “dry-gulch a chuck.” Yes, that’s as bad as it sounds. To dry-gulch an animal involves distance (it must not see you) and technology (a .222 — one of the fastest, flattest-shooting rounds ever devised). In essence, we were sniping.

There were only certain times when you could spot woodchucks. One was early spring, before the hay was up. Again, at first hay, which was near the end of June. That was a short window, but the chucks were healthier, fatter. They were positively bloated after the second hay, in early fall. That’s when they were biggest, but by then my hunting interests were for actual game rather than an animal classified as a “varmint.”

It was easiest in early spring. There was no cover for the animals yet, and they stood out like sore thumbs on the hillsides. We’d take Trooper’s old gold Pontiac and cruise the country roads, enjoying the warm sun and new green, till he’d say, “There’s one.” Then out came the .222.

Woodchucks average about 7 lbs. By fall they’ll weigh up to 10 or 12, but the springtime chuck has just awakened from hibernation. They’re hungry, and will forsake good sense for groceries. But, like I said, they were wary beasts. You had to have good eyes, like Trooper Don. Most shots were taken at over 300 yards, some as far as 400. Trooper was a deadeye.

When dry enough, he’d shoot prone by the roadside. If not, the Pontiac hood was the rest. The biggest thrill came when he’d say, “You take this one, Rick.” Dry-gulchers may be scoundrels, but it sure was fun. You’d only get one shot. That .222 had a loud bark, and those chucks would go underground for hours.

As I got older, I put a little more sport in my chuck-hunting and vowed only to take them with iron sights and a .22. That’s not a typo folks; it’s one less 2 than a .222, and about one-tenth its strength. This involved stalking to within effective range for a clean kill, which with a .22 is about 100 feet. I got good at it. I learned to use ridges and fencerows for cover. Learned how to crawl through wet grass and cowflops. I learned to hold my breath and pee downwind. Chucks taught me how to be a better hunter. They taught me stealth, patience, and perseverance. And disappointment…

My most memorable chuck-hunting experience didn’t even involve a woodchuck. It was a sunny April Sunday in 1969. My quarry was bolt-upright by a chuckhole in the very center of a bare hillside above a sprawling dairy farm. I crawled over barbed wire, 20 yards of blackberry prickers, through an ice-cold intermittent creek and a nasty bed of stinging nettles till I could crawl no further. There was no more cover. Only 100 yards of naked grass between me and my little brown dot of a target. A long shot indeed for a .22, but I felt I earned it. I squeezed and the animal flipped. Bingo!

Immediately, something wasn’t right. Yeah, I’d hit it, but what was that? A tail? Yes, woodchucks have tails, but they’re short squirrelly things. This tail was long and lush. I went to inspect. My heart flopped into my stomach. I had killed a cat.

It was a clean kill. A good shot with “Ol’ Betsy,” but I was not happy. Target identification is crucial in hunting. That’s why Trooper Don used a scope. I decided to ‘fess up and take whatever punishment was at hand. I collected the carcass and made for the farm below.

This was mid-afternoon, dinnertime on the family farm.  The whole clan was there, kids, folks, and grand folks, just sitting down at the table. The old man met me at the door with a napkin tucked in his collar. A little girl ran up beside him. “He killed Fluffy!” she blurted tearfully. “I’m sorry,” was all I could say.

Dad shook his head, picked his front teeth with a thumbnail and said “Kid, let me show you something.” He stepped out and we walked to the barn. I couldn’t imagine what kind of filthy restitution he had in store. Farms were rife with nasty chores. He threw open the huge doors. The place reeked of manure and cow piss.  n the center was a trough of sorts, narrow and long, filled with milk. Three dozen cats crowded around. “Tell you what,” the farmer said. “Come in here sometime and thin these guys out.”

I shot my last chuck when I was seventeen. It was windy and cool, the grass was mid-height, and I had company, my old buddy, Egg. I normally stalked chucks solo; a single presence was tough enough to conceal. I guess we were lucky that day. The wind was with us, and I had an old stone fencerow for cover. It was close and clean. He was big, about nine pounds, and I laid him on a rock to admire. “He’s kinda cute,” Egg remarked. He was right. And a healthy specimen too. Shiny fur, big belly… “What are you gonna do with it?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Food for the crows.”

“Kind of a waste,” Egg said.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “It’s a waste.” I never chuck-hunted again.

February 2nd is Groundhog’s Day. They made a movie about it once. It was mildly entertaining, but had very little to do with groundhogs. Southerners don’t realize the impact the groundhog tradition has on winter housebound Yankees. It’s the first glimpse of the light at the end of a frozen tunnel. It’s a day that says, “Take heart, to all suffering will come an end.” And that thought is embodied in a large whistling rodent whom I know for a fact would never venture from its burrow in February. It’s funny how myth can elevate a varmint. I’ve never heard anyone call an armadillo “cute.”

Son of Random Notes
By Rick LaClaire

Long ago I had a boss whose favorite movie was “Some Like It Hot.” I must admit, with a stellar cast including Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, Marilyn Monroe, and Joe E. Brown, it seems only fitting that this flick had its habitués. We spent many hours side-by-side in that sweatshop and he incessantly sang that movie’s praises via scene-by-scene analysis. I had never seen “Some Like It Hot,” but I knew its every nuance, and finally one late night, I saw it. Hmm… I guess it’s because I’m not British. No, it’s not a British movie, but the Brits are the only people I know who think cross-dressing is hilarious. How do I know this? I’ve seen “Benny Hill.”

So “Some Like It Hot” did nothing for me, but there’s another Tony Curtis film that did: “The Vikings.” “The Vikings” was the very first movie I ever saw. Dad took my older brother and me to the Starlit Drive-In in Watertown, New York, and it was 1959. We brought our own popcorn in a greasy brown grocery bag and I wore my jammies. I was only five. What a thrill. The scene that awed me most was when the hawk pecked out Kirk Douglas’s eye (nightmare city for a five-year-old). That was about all I remembered till I saw it again in 1994. Then, kind of like listening to the Grateful Dead after a 30-year hiatus, my reaction was more of amusement than reverence. What was with Tony Curtis? A Viking slave with a Bronx accent? Slightly miscast? Ah, but then there’s that great swordfight in the end. You gotta admit, Tony kept himself in shape. Whatever happened to Drive-Ins?

“The Rat Race”… A fair flick, and a somewhat-realistic slice of small-time showbiz. Tony was well-cast there. “The Boston Strangler” was good too. He fit right in. “The Defiant Ones” was a little message-heavy, but he hid his accent as best he could, convincingly playing a southern chain gang prisoner. It is said that versatility was his forte, but to me he’ll always be that Viking from the Bronx. No matter what he did, you just couldn’t help but like him. He died in September last year at 85.

I’m sure everyone remembers Morrie Yohai. You don’t? Well, you should. He invented the Cheez Doodle. I have a love/hate thing with Cheez Doodles. I love the way they taste and crunch, but it’s the only snack that rats on you. Let’s face it, if you’ve been eating Cheez Doodles, everybody knows it. Your lips and fingers are orange. So is everything you touch. Never eat Cheez Doodles with beer and expect to make love that night. Morrie had a lot of other things going for him besides Cheez Doodles. He was also a teacher, an author, and a poet. I like that in a guy. Morrie was a man of multiple facets, just like they say Tony Curtis was. In fact, they were both from the Bronx. Morrie died last August at age 90.

Remember the song “Sunny” from 1966? I sure do. Why? Because I played that song three times a night at high school dances with my slightly-less-than-hot high school rock band. We did it as an instrumental and used it for our break song. It was great for announcements. You know, stuff like: “There’s a blue Dodge, plate number OU-69, your lights are on” and “We found a wallet in the boy’s room. If you can tell us what’s in it, it’s yours.” “Sunny” was probably the coolest song we did. We could stretch it out with jams and tailor it to any message. I never sang the song, only played it on guitar, and it wasn’t till recently that I even knew what the song was about — in fact, I always thought it was spelled “Sonnie.” The song was born of tragedy, written by a guy named Bobby Hebb. His brother had been killed and Mr. Hebb was at an all-time low. A simple smile from a stranger turned it all around, and from his grief came reward: a hit song. He had a few minor chartings after that — one that comes to my mind is “Sweeter Than Soda” — but “Sunny” was his big hit. Bobby Hebb died in August. He was 72.

Another big loss in August was Patricia Neal. Who could forget her role as Alma in “Hud”? This was a woman who managed to work with the A-list: Gary Cooper, John Wayne, Paul Newman… But it was with Andy Griffith that she made her deepest impression on me, in the seldom-aired masterpiece “A Face In the Crowd.” She always had that tired look, that smoky voice, and weak smile. With her, it came off sexy; with anyone else it would come off sickly. She was sick. She suffered a nervous breakdown and strokes; at one point she was in a coma, then delivered a healthy baby. Apparently the smoky voice was no act either, she died of lung cancer at age 84.

Ah, Barbara Billingsley… She was every kid’s mother in 1960 — or at least what every kid wished was his mother. As “Leave It To Beaver” syndicated and I grew older, I began to see Mrs. Cleaver as one hot mom. Wasp-waisted with a stand-up bust that could poke your eye out, it made me wonder why Ward would spend any time at all at the office (what did he do there anyway?). She died in October, age 95.

Who in my generation has never seen “Easy Rider”? This is another movie I place in the “Grateful Dead category.” I took it seriously when it came out, but now, well… That movie taught me two things: don’t say “man” every third word, and never trip on acid in a cemetery with a coupla whores. Regardless of what I may think now, it was a big flick. It was also the best acting Peter Fonda ever did (he played himself — figure that out). Mr. Hopper actually had a long and stellar acting career. He was Babalugats in “Cool Hand Luke” (one of my favorites flicks of all time), he was great as the boilermaker-swilling dad in “Rumble Fish,” and of course everyone remembers him in “Hoosiers,” for which he won an award. But man, it’s “Easy Rider” in which I’ll always remember him, man. He died last May.

Anyone who has ever wet a line in the surf at the foot of Third Avenue in Melbourne Beach knew Harbin Reed. I met him the first day I moved to Melbourne Beach, 16 years ago. I remember our first conversation. The surf was pitching a fit and I asked how much weight he was using. “Four ounces,” he said. The next day the surf was flat. Harbin was there again, with rod, lawn chair, and can of Busch. “How much weight today?” I asked. “Four ounces,” he replied quickly. Wait a minute, I thought. It’s flat as a board. “Kinda heavy, doncha think?” I commented. “It’s the only sinker mold I have,” he answered. We became fast friends. Everybody knew him: the old timers, the surf punks, the surfer girls, the old longboard guys, and especially the fishermen.

I spent a lot of hours on that stretch of beach with Harbin. Once, he caught the biggest bonnethead shark I have ever seen. It was five feet long. When he beached it, it began giving birth to scores of baby sharks, which flipped and flopped on the sand. He did all he could to revive her and return her to the sea unharmed, but the babies kept coming. Kids collected them and tried to keep them in the water but the waves brought them back to the beach. Birds began to gather. “What a beautiful fish,” Harbin sighed. “What a shame. All I wanted to do was get the hook out and let her go.” He was moved to tears. Neither the mother nor her spawn survived. Another fisherman put her on ice and took her away. “Well, somebody’s going to make good use of her,” he admitted. “I sure am sorry.”

On a shelf in my living room is the oldest manmade item I possess. It is a .31 caliber bullet mold for a Colt’s Model 49 Pocket Revolver. It’s over 150 years old. It’s in great shape, and could still be used. Harbin gave it to me after I had told him I was an old-gun aficionado. He had been a collector too, till he was robbed. The bullet mold was all he had left of his pilfered collection, and he gave it to me. Every time I see it I think of him. He died in July. He was in his 80s.

J.D.Salinger, Jill Clayburgh, Tom Boswell… 2010 really took its toll on our popular culture. However, no obit list for the past year would be complete if I did not include the passing of one of the greatest icons of the ’60s ever: Pontiac.

The first new car I ever bought was a Pontiac. It was a LeMans. Sadly, by 1991, the Pontiac LeMans was pretty pathetic. The car was either made in Brazil or South Korea — I’m still not sure — and it was definitely not the LeMans we knew in ’67. Let’s face it, Pontiac invented the muscle car. The Firebird… The Trans-Am… And of course, that holy grail of musclecardom, the GTO. Even the lesser-muscled models like the Tempest and LeMans could be tricked-out and pumped-up. Well, in the old days anyway… Not so, the LeMans I owned. By ’91 the LeMans had been relegated to a cheap-ass economy model, and that’s why I bought it. Cheap. I don’t think a bit of it was made in America, and this was before First Nation Trading Status With Communist Dictatorships. To put it in scientific terms, it was a turd. I traded it when the grill fell off, taking the headlights with it.

Pontiac also had a luxury line of sorts, the Bonneville and Catalina. My dad had a lemon-yellow ’67 Catalina. It had a grill that looked like it could swallow you whole, and that lemon-yellow color, well, it was prophetic. He bought it in late ’66, and by ’68 he’d moved on to Dodge. His car was his office. I guess the Catalina didn’t fill the bill. All I remember was a light bulb under the hood on winter days. I guess there were choke issues. Whatever happened to chokes? Whatever happened to jammies and paper-bag popcorn at the Drive-In?

We know what happened to Pontiac.

By Rick LaClaire

Once more it is the end of the year, time to evaluate the days that constituted this checkered span we called Twenty-Ten.

Or was it Two-Oh One-Oh? Or maybe Two Thousand Ten? You know, up until the twenty hundreds, you never had a problem like this. It was so simple. When it was Nineteen Sixty-Eight nobody ever butted in with “One Thousand, Nine Hundred and Sixty-Eight” or “One, Nine, Six, Eight.” Heck no, it was just plain old Nineteen Sixty-Eight and everybody knew it and lived with it. Then came that stupid year Two Thousand — or what some referred to as “the Millennium” — and the year-tags got all screwy. It’s like being newly-married and wondering what to call your in-laws. Do I call them “Mom” and “Dad,” or “Missus” and “Mister”? Or by their first names, like peers? It took me fourteen years to sort that out. I just call them “Ma’am” and “Sir.”

Twenty-Ten blew in on a low note. It was a cold freakin’ winter. Friends who’ve lived here all their lives had never seen anything like this. After ten freezes, I lost count. My garden was obliterated. No bugs though, that was nice.

Then I got sick. Hospital sick. What a jolt that was. A restricted diet and medication for three months ensued, sucking the fun out of everything I love: eating, and… well… eating. I’m still not fully recovered. Are you going to have that last pork chop?

And man, what a crummy year for business. Last year was terrible. This year was worse! I didn’t think it could get any worse. But it did. I feel bad for our president; he’s taking a lot of hits for it. He didn’t cause this. Our collapse was long in coming and what we need now is some severe leadership to put us back on track. I don’t think we’re going to see it with this guy. Like I said, it’s not his fault. But he’s the man in The Big Chair. The spitballs stop there. Is this what Shakespeare meant by “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”?

No weddings this year. One funeral. Could have been worse, I guess. I think back to the good old days like Twenty-Oh-Eight: seemed like a wedding or funeral every month. Come on, man! Give us old folks something to do. Get married or die, okay? Some may say “what’s the difference?” You know, when I think about it, I wear the same suit to both.

Anyone who reads me (Hi, Mom!) knows I get a certain bug up a certain orifice when it comes to the subject of beach renourishment. For one thing, the word “renourishment” is not even in the dictionary (I checked), which means to me that it’s a phony, made-up word. Well, a “renourished” beach is just that: a phony, made-up beach. For weeks this spring, during the absolute height of tourist season, Melbourne Beach was once again subjected to this annoying, noisy, life-killing waste of money, fuel and time. Now tell me if this makes sense: they expand the size of the beach to attract tourists, but close down the beach to do it when most of them are here.

Now I’m sure the people who live on the ocean think this is just ducky. “Oh good! Now we can have a hurricane and we won’t have to worry about losing any property!” Yeah, right… I’ve seen fairly lame nor’easters take it all out overnight. Then, two days of southeast winds will bring it all back. Well, some of it… That’s the story of a beach. It’s not a static thing like a mountain range or a canyon. It’s an ever-changing, very delicate biome that depends on this change to satisfy the native flora and fauna. For six months at the end of my street there was not a single sand flea, calico crab, or coquina clam to be found. The fishing suffered horribly. Finally, in mid-October, I noticed the return of the sand fleas. And finally, by mid-October, surf fishermen were filling their buckets with long-absent pompano.

Something beach renourishment doesn’t affect though, are the migrating species. That was extremely evident in the fantastic autumn mackerel run this past season. And they were big ones, bigger than usual. I always know I’m having a good fall run when my tennis elbow kicks in. That’s from trying to tame line-smoking two-foot Spanish on a ten-pound spinning outfit. Yeah, the elbow still hurts (and it’ll hurt for six months), but I could listen to that drag sing and watch that fluorocarbon rip the shore break all day long. And what a beautiful fish. They fairly glow when fresh from the foam. And all those pretty spots… “Brook trout of the surf” I like to call them. Truly a prince among cannibals at that time of year, and cannibals they are. Fishing may be a cruel sport, but what those fish do to each other is far worse than our human intrusion. Nearly every mackerel I landed this fall had some kind of wound; a chunk of skin missing, bites out of the tail, gaping slashes… When mackerel see another in distress (like on a fishing line) they go into feed mode and chow down, be it bait or brethren.

As always, summer was a hot one in 2010. As I get older, my tolerance for heat seems to be slipping. The only good thing about this summer was that work picked up. But of course it was so freakin’ hot that I had to dig deep for incentive to work. It was also a banner year for mosquitoes. You may or may not have noticed, but I sure did. You see, my workshop is not air-conditioned. I cut lumber, use stinky glues and solvents, and simply can’t operate under re-circulated air. To compensate, I begin work earlier and leave the windows and door open. Mosquitoes love the early morning. They also love my feet and ankles. Why do they always bite on the ankle-knob or Achilles tendon? They’re such nasty places to itch. The skin is thin and slides around when you scratch, so you get no relief. Is my blood tastier in those spots? They like the back of the knees, too.

Between the sweat and the mosquito bites I’m surprised I got any work done at all, but then bingo, September arrived. It was like someone flicked a switch. Temperatures plummeted into the 80s. It dried out. I actually felt like working. This past fall was one of the most beautiful we ever had, and it came right on time. Somebody please tell the mosquitoes.

2010 was an election year, and that always has an impact on what I call the “Guff Factor.” In other words, how much annoying brainless drivel can you stand? I’ve never seen elections full of more guff than this past one. You know, I think I say that every election year.

The most annoying facet of Guff Factor 2010 was the amount of negative campaigning. It’s all there was. My mother always said, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” That’s solid advice, and if any of 2010′s candidates had followed it I might have felt more like I was voting for someone rather than against someone. It almost made me not want to vote at all.

For a year that began so dismally, 2010 has shaped up fairly well. By “fairly well” I mean better than expected. My business figures are not great, but they have at least risen to normal. I can work with that. After all, “normal” is the new “fantastic.” And if we take that attitude and carry it into the next year, things may very well become fantastic.

At least 2011 has no elections in it.

I walk. Anybody who knows me knows this.

Constantly, I’m greeted with “Hey! I seen you out walkin’…” or “Need a lift?” No, I don’t need a lift. I’m truckin’.

If you read this stuff, then you know I’m aging (just like you) and you know I suffer from its effects. A good percentage of Americans get fat when they get old. Sorry, but it happens. I am no exception. So what do I do about it? I exercise. Does it work? I’m not sure. But I walk. Three, four days a week. For miles… And I don’t walk, I truck.

I hate it in summer. Before the first mile I am soaked in sweat. By the time I make it home I am a soggy mess, right down to my socks, and this is at 6, 7 a.m. I see people walking on the causeways mid-day and wonder how they do it. I guess you walk when you can.

But like I said, I truck. This is not a stroll. Anyone who’s walked with me (and there are very few) knows this, and no one has come twice. What is “truckin’”? We-e-ll, Virginia, let me elaborate.

Who, in my readership, has never heard of The Grateful Dead? Well, maybe my Mom, but not anymore. Yeah, it’s a weird name for a band. According to one story (and there are many), The Grateful Dead was a category of old British folk songs compiled by one Francis Child. These were songs about unrequited ghosts; you know, the old “unfinished business” dead people who roam the twilight zone attempting to complete their tasks, and who, when they make it, are grateful. I don’t think the boys ever recorded any of these songs, but Mr. Garcia and company seemed to think it a fitting moniker. It is rumored that drugs may have been involved.

The first time I heard the Grateful Dead was the evening of my senior prom. All tuxed-out, a small group of peers and our dates retired to a friend’s house after the festivities for some late-night beer and music. This was January 1972, and like the hippies we wanted to be, we sat on the rug, bided our time, drank our wine, and spun some wax. The album was Live Dead (catchy, huh?) and my first reaction was “What’s this poop?” (But I didn’t use the word “poop.”)

Donnie, our host said, “The Dead, man! What do you think?”

I didn’t know. “Are they all playing the same song?” I asked.

“You don’t get it, man,” he replied. “You gotta be trippin’ on acid to understand The Dead.”

Uh, yeah, Donnie. Sorry, I left my acid on my nightstand right next to my sea monkey aquarium. Well, that’s what I should have said. What I really said was, “Nitric or sulfuric?” By May of that year, “Truckin’” by the Grateful Dead was at the top of the local charts.

It’s probably their most accessible song. A coherent bouncy shuffle, a drug reference for good measure, and bingo! In ’72 that was the recipe for a hit. I believe it’s the only song they ever charted with.

Eventually, due to college roommates from Long Island, I became a quasi-fan, and even bought one of their records. I still listen to Workingman’s Dead on a regular basis. I think it’s their best. Workingman’s Dead and Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon were the soundtrack of my higher education.

I am in possession of six Dead albums. Five were gifts. “Truckin’” appears on American Beauty, but I also have the infamous “Skeleton & Roses” double, Europe ’72 (a triple), a rare one called Bear’s Choice, and 1977′s extremely disappointing Terrapin Station. Except for Workingman’s, all are pretty dusty; in fact, Terrapin was only played once. So a couple of months ago, for nostalgia’s sake, I dug them out of my sacred vinyl collection (it fills an entire closet) and thought I’d spin up some memories.

Whoa… What a mistake. I used to like this stuff? Then I realized I had done this before. In 1996, to be exact, when a hurricane named Bertha threatened our shores. Jerry Garcia had died the year before — a devastating event for any lingering Deadheads — and now a hurricane with the title of one of their songs was urging us to “Move, move,” and demand that “Bertha don’t you come around here anymore.” It was fitting then, but my more recent un-dusting of the holy platters was not so enlightening. It was sad. Scatalogical lyrics, oblique guitar ramblings, seemingly endless jams — all the stuff I once thought cool now seemed silly. Then I spun up “Truckin’.”

Suddenly it was May, 1972. I was a lost soul, about to leave high school for the Great Unknown. Only music can do this (and certain smells), and in a moment’s time I was that gangly, afro-haired wannabe hippie, holding hands with a girl I would soon never see again, skipping across a cow pasture in Northern New York, sniffing the flowers and wondering if my draft number was high enough to avoid Vietnam.

Truckin’
Got my chips cashed in
Keep truckin’
Like the Do-Dah Man…

I never who the Do-Dah Man was. Still don’t. But for that moment I was the Do-Dah Man — ankle-deep in clover, twirling a gold watch, wagging a finger, and wondering if anybody brought rolling papers. Ah, youth: wasted on the wrong people.

I’d love to be young again, to feel that feeling of the Great Unknown. To live that life when it didn’t matter if my next payday would occur, whether my car would start, or whether my health insurance would cover the removal of a malignant facial lesion. Oh, to be free! Free from money. Free from worry. Free from… What am I saying!?

Are we ever “free”? Someone paid those bills of my youth. Someone was there to feed and clothe me, loan me the family car on Saturday night, and make sure my cavities were filled and my nose wiped. And we all knew who that was: Mom and Dad. They subsidized us even when we denigrated every thing they held dear: grooming, hygiene, security, patriotism, a faithful spouse, a god to worship, and standards by which to raise honest productive offspring.

But we were too cool. Who needs that stuff? We cast it aside for the fleeting joys of promiscuity, drugs, slob-like appearance, and monotonous drum solos. God was Clapton. God was acid. But, as Jerry Garcia himself said, the Grateful Dead were “just a bunch of good-time pirates.” In other words, have fun for a while, then go home. Go to work. Raise your babies right. Then smile about your own footloose past. And for that moment I did.

Yes, I would like to be young again. And that’s why I “truck,” three, four days a week. Summer and winter. No, I still don’t look good with my clothes off. But I didn’t look good with my clothes off thirty years ago either. Neither did those naked chicks in that mudhole at Woodstock.

But unlike Jerry, I’m still here. Still truckin’…

The Bully

“The most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’” — Ronald Reagan

This past August, the Powers That Be massed in Washington to address what they consider a serious issue regarding our school-age children: bullying.

A non-issue you say? Not the stuff our politicians should be wading into? Or is their concern legitimate?

Your reaction to taunts and shoves on a school bus is a fair predictor of how you’ll react to overbearing bosses, spouses, drunken louts, and tyranny in general later in life. I’ve always thought the experience of being bullied was somewhat necessary in shaping your adult personality. The Powers That Be do not agree, but that figures. There’s very little I have ever agreed with concerning The Powers That Be. Was I ever bullied? Hell, yes. With a mouth as big as mine, I drew a lot of negative attention. Was it a learning process? Hell, yes — though I didn’t realize it at the time. I was too busy being scared to death.

It was May, 1968. I was in eighth grade. We were at assembly in the school auditorium. I was shooting my mouth off, goofing with my buddies, when out of the blue, a fist crashed into my face. At that same moment, the auditorium lights went down and all went dark. An electric charge of fright shot up my spine. Someone hated me. Someone wanted to hurt me. And momentarily, I didn’t know who or why. I wasn’t kept in the dark for long.

The first thing I did was leave the auditorium. It didn’t hurt that much, but I headed for the boys’ room to see if I was bleeding. I’d never been punched in the face before. It wouldn’t be the last time. The biggest surprise when I looked in the mirror was not the sight of blood (there was none), but my complexion. It was ashen. I threw water on my face and sneaked back into the assembly, this time sitting way in the back, far from whoever attacked me.

It was the end of the day and when the auditorium let out, we filed for the buses. A friend sat next to me. “What was that all about?” he asked. “What was what?” I faked, unable to look him in the eye. “You shoulda hit him back,” another friend said. “Hit who?” I didn’t know. I didn’t want to know. But my buddies knew. “Vic Verner!” somebody said. “Why didn’t you hit him back?” “Because it’s Vic Verner!” someone else cracked. A scary “wooooo” rose all around me. Vic Verner… Of course that wasn’t his real name. I wouldn’t dare. Although, as things eventually turned out, it wouldn’t matter.

There were a solid dozen Verner kids, all crammed into a crumbling tenement down by the paper mill. Chances were if you offended one, you’d have eleven more to go through. In today’s terms, Vic Verner would be considered a sociopath. He was exactly the kind of person The Powers That Be like to forge policy around.

Later that afternoon I went fishing. It was a gorgeous spring day; the creek was clear and I needed distraction. Our nearest trout stream was a couple of miles away and ran through a nasty neighborhood. I’d had run-ins with kids from there before and usually fished far upstream to avoid that crowd. On this day I went right to belly of the beast, tempting fate. Fate didn’t appear, but it was a good choice. I caught two beautiful brookies, one on a bee imitation and the other on a Black Gnat. Why do I remember this? They were my first trout on flies. I went to bed that night feeling pretty good, my fishing experience had erased my gloom. That was not to last.

The following day, I was informed that I was on a special list: Vic Verner’s “Poop List.” This list was so special that I learned the information from its originator, Vic Verner himself. It was preceded by something called a “noogie,” which is a sharp and very painful knuckle-rap to the skull. The presentation went something like this:

Noogie.

“Ow!”

“Yer on my poop list, pansy.” (But he didn’t use the word “poop.”)

This was on Thursday. On Thursdays, after school, I had band practice with my homeys. The guitars came out, the drums were set up, and we were ready to rock. Well, everyone but me. I couldn’t concentrate. My bandmates wanted to know what was wrong. I was too ashamed to say. Then someone said, “I heard Vic Verner’s got it out for you.” Another electric jolt went up my spine. “You gotta stand up to this guy,” he said. “Show him you’re not scared. Hit him back.” “Yeah,” I said. But I couldn’t. I was scared.

Things got worse. Vic accosted me in the lunch line. “You got any money, faggot?” I gave him my quarter, the price of lunch. A big mistake; I didn’t eat lunch for a week. Then, a miracle happened. Or so I thought…

I knew a guy named Phil. Phil was tough. I don’t think he was a sociopath, but he had a rep. He once punched me in the stomach just for getting ink on his mohair sweater. I couldn’t avoid him; his locker was next to mine. Vic, as usual, slammed my face into the locker louvers on his way to the buses saying “Tomorrow, Twinkie” and Phil saw it. “Is that guy giving you poop?” Phil asked, but he didn’t use the word “poop”… I just looked at him, rubbing my face. Phil’s eyes narrowed. “He’s in my gym class. He won’t bother you anymore.”

And suddenly, Vic Verner didn’t bother me anymore. For about a week. Then, without warning, he was in my face. He slammed my head into a plate glass window in the hall. I hit so hard I thought the glass would break. His ugly face spat into mine: “Where’s my quarter?” I didn’t have time to reply. Vic already had it. Later, at the lockers: “Phil,” I said. “He’s back to bugging me. Could you talk to him again?” Phil winced like he’d caught a bad smell. “You know what? I’m sick of this, LaClaire. You gotta learn to stand up for yourself.” I was wounded, physically and emotionally. I had nowhere to turn, or so I thought.

“What’s that on your face?” It was my mother. We were eating dinner. Well, they were eating, I was just pushing food around. “Somebody hit you?” she persisted. “That looks like a bruise.” “Gym class,” I muttered. I may have been miserable, but there was no way I was going to rat somebody out. I would never be able to live that down. “Somebody hit you,” she stated. “You’ve been acting funny for a couple weeks.” I wanted to blurt it all out, shed this experience and let everybody know the degradation I was suffering. But I didn’t. I just sat there. It didn’t do any good. She knew. “Either you go down to the office first thing tomorrow and report this, or I will. What’ll it be? You or me?” No! No! No! You don’t understand! If I do that I’ll lose all respect! Nobody likes a rat! Nobody likes a guy who won’t stand up for himself either.

I didn’t do what she told me. I just couldn’t. But my problem hadn’t gone away, that was for sure. Vic caught me in the boys’ room. He had a couple of toadies with him. He pinned me against the wall. “Hey, pantywaist. What’s for lunch?” For two weeks this ugly bastard had run my life — he’d even dragged my mother into it. And now, he had an audience. I suddenly felt bold. I pushed him away. “You know what? I’m sick of this, Verner. I’m sick of you stealing from me and I’m sick of you bushwhacking me all the time. You know what I’m going to do?” Vic’s eyes widened. He was getting ready to strike. His buddies backed away. “If you don’t leave me alone, I’m going to report you. My parents know about this. And even if I don’t do it, they will.” Then Vic backed away. It worked. It was over.

I can’t say I won every scrap I had when I was a teenybopper. But after that experience, I never backed down again. It’s better to suffer a bloody lip and go down swinging than become somebody’s bitch. Vic didn’t stick with school much longer. I sure didn’t miss him. He eventually joined the service, and one day, while home on leave, he blew himself up. He was making a bomb. Sociopathic? Definitely. It’s nice to know that sometimes they weed themselves out.

Is bullying a Federal case? I don’t know. Both of my children were bullied. I witnessed it with my son, and offered to step in. He wouldn’t hear of it, and said it would only make matters worse. A long time ago, David Bromberg recorded an appropriate song called “Watch Baby Fall.” Though he laments that “the most godawful thing” he’d ever done was let his son fall, in the end he resigns himself to the sad, inescapable truth: “You can’t learn for them, and you can’t take their pain.”

The Mean Season
• Rick LaClaire •

I have a love/hate relationship with September. It is a month of polarities — apogees and perigees of weather, emotion and marine life. It can be good; it can be bad. And it can be very, very bad.

Of course when I say “very, very bad,” two particular Septembers come to mind: September 2001, when the dirtiest trick in history was played upon humanity, and that mean season of mean seasons, September 2004. September ’04 is still a fresh track in the mud of my memory and it needs a little time to set before its tale is told. But September ’01? Yeah, it’s about ripe. Time to reminisce…

We had company for the Labor Day weekend that year, my brother and his son. Unfortunately, my wife was not here, so Dad had to do all the entertaining. That involved cooking. Lord help you when I’m the designated chef. Since the men outnumbered my daughter four-to-one, the menu leaned in their favor. I’d asked my wife to take that into consideration when grocery shopping before she left. She was attending her brother’s wedding in Toronto that weekend and she’d stocked the larder per my specifications: seven pounds of hamburger and one whopping bag of charcoal.

By September in any given year I have usually reached the limit of my heat tolerance. In other words, I’m tired of it. The summer of ’01 was a hot one, as they all are in Florida, and I was looking forward to the one thing that injects a ray of autumn into this seemingly endless heat wave: the September fish run.

It’s beautiful thing. It starts with inky swirls of glass minnows, then graduates to pogies and greenies, culminating in tides of mullet of varying sizes. Each species attracts its predators, and even the predators have predators. For example, glass minnows appeal to Spanish mackerel, which appeal to sharks. Mullet appeal to jacks, which also appeal to sharks. Anything appeals to bluefish, which appeal to bigger bluefish, which also appeal to sharks. Do you see a pattern here? I don’t swim when the run starts.

The ’01 run came right on schedule. It probably was the last time we had a decent one. We had a huge croaker migration in mid-August; croakers big enough to actually eat, and that drove the snook nuts. That was followed by the glass minnow/mackerel/shark phenomenon. By September 1, the tarpon rodeo was in full swing. I remember that morning distinctly.

After stuffing our faces with charbroiled burgers the night before, I awoke early to check the beach situation. Just before sunup I was in the garden tying leader when I noticed a strange apparition in the sky. It was a blazing red ribbon, horizon to horizon, arrow straight. I don’t know if it was an illuminated jet contrail or an approaching front or what, but I’d never seen anything like it before or since.

Sunrise was resplendent in red, indicating another hot day, and the surf was nothing but shore pound. Perfect conditions, and from my access I could see schools of bait erupting and spattering across the surface. I had tied on a 3/8-oz. gold Sprite spoon (one of my favorite lures) and immediately realized I was traveling too light. Tarpon were prowling. I hesitated, thinking maybe I should fetch a 30-lb. outfit rather than the 10-pounder I was toting, but then said, “I’m here. Let’s give it a try with what I’ve got.” That turned out to be a lot of fun.

I didn’t have any hits from tarpon that morning, but I did catch bar jacks, cutlass fish, mackerel, baby blues, and jack crevelle. I beached a flounder when my line got caught in the shore break and my spoon rested on the bottom for a few seconds. The strangest thing though, were the trout. I’ve caught a few small silver trout in the surf, but this day I landed a whopper, a fat-bellied 20-incher. It was followed by an equal-sized spotted trout. That was the first and only spotted seatrout I have ever caught in the surf. The sky must have been an omen.

Burgers for lunch, burgers for supper, upset stomachs on Sunday. I heard my nephew say to his dad: “I hope Aunt Donna’s here next time. I’m sick of burgers.” The neighbors threw an early Labor Day party. They loaded me down with a platter of hot dogs and fried chicken when I left. It was greatly appreciated at home. Company left on Monday, and September 2001 ground on.

Who does not remember where they were on September 11, 2001? It’s the same with December 7, 1941 and November 22, 1963. Why? Because these were days when the world changed. I wasn’t around for Pearl Harbor Day, but my Mom and Dad were. Dad was already in the Marines. It was a Sunday, and he and his buddies were playing ball, or so he said. When Kennedy was shot I was in Miss Westcott’s fourth grade classroom. The janitor told us. And on 9/11 I was in the dentist’s office.

It didn’t sink in at first. An airliner hit a building. Terrible accident, I thought, because that’s what I thought it was. Big buildings, skies full of big airplanes; I figured these things were bound to happen sooner or later. Yes, it was tragic, but I went about my day. I was in a customer’s shop when the second plane hit. At that moment the world changed.

And like the song by Alan Jackson, the first thing I did was call my mother. She informed me that the Pentagon had been hit. Whoa… I needed to catch up on the news. Why was Katie Couric still on TV at 11 in the morning? Hadn’t her shift passed? Then Jeb came on. “Fly your flag,” he said. I did just that. A customer showed up. We watched the buildings burn.

“We’re at war,” he said.

“With who?” I asked.

Once the “T-word” was bandied, I assumed it was homegrown terrorists, guys like Nichols and McVeigh, or radical environmentalists. I never knew I’d soon be learning about a religion I never thought about, and the meanings of words like Al Kaida, jihad, fatwa, and Taliban. I also never could have predicted its personal impact.

No, I did not know a soul killed in the 9/11 attacks. For that, I consider myself very lucky. The horror, the very idea of wasting human lives as collateral shrapnel to randomly kill thousands… What kind of mind could come up with this? And the misery of all those families… Whether you knew anyone involved or not, you could not help but share the grief.

Temporarily, all air commerce ceased. It felt like they shut down all commerce. For two full months following 9/11, I could turn very little work. Customers ordered less and were paying late, a bad combination. I couldn’t get supplies shipped. A leaden cloak of fear spread nationwide.

I began to notice the Arabs in our midst. Where did they come from? What were they up to? Rumors flew. There’d been another plane… They’re going to hit a shopping mall… A bus… A train… They’ve got nukes… We went to a high school football game and cried when they played our national anthem. Then, in the middle of the game, a loud jet flew over and everyone looked at each other in panic. Was this it? What a perfect target we were.

What do you do when the world turns sinister; when you find you’re an enemy and don’t really know why? What do you do when grief, suspicion, anger, and revenge seethe? You throw a party. Well, we didn’t throw one, but our friends did, and we went.

I guess we were supposed to commiserate and console; you know, get drunk and sing patriotic songs or something. This was a somber party at best. I couldn’t help but look at our kids. My daughter was 17. Our host’s son and his buds were all 15, 16. My son was 7. War was brewing. The word “draft” was being whispered by The Powers That Be. Our sons and daughters would pay the price: this would be their war. I couldn’t fathom why anyone should die because of some whacked-out religious sect. So I guess that party served a purpose: it showed that even when so many want to harm you, you still have friends. We did a lot of hugging that night.

September 2001 ground on. I was told the fishing was hot, but I just didn’t feel like it. I had no work. I worried and sweated in the heat. The TV droned constantly; the same old subject over and over. Stories of the WTC victims began to leak. Recordings of last phone calls, pictures of people diving out the upper stories, the accordion-like collapse… Over and over… Pundits pontificating. Fingers pointing. People were beginning to say we deserved what happened; that we brought it on by being so materialistic. This made other people (myself included) even madder. We were rightly and mightily consumed by the event. We still are.

Then it was October. It didn’t mean anything, nothing changed. It was still hot. There was still no work. But at least we were past that awful September.

And it started out so well…

“Death steals everything except our stories” — Jim Harrison

I belong to a unique club. We don’t skydive nude, catch fish with our bare hands or invest large sums in Internet startups. We don’t go en masse to early bird specials wearing funny hats or recite 13th century Italian poetry. This club is very exclusive. First, you had to attend a certain slightly-less-than-prestigious institute of slightly-less-than-higher learning between 1972 and 1976. Then you had to marry your college sweetheart between 1977 and 1981. And guess what? You had to actually stay married. To that same person… This club is not large, but I belong.

What is it about college friendships that makes them so enduring? Is it the shared poverty? The fact that these friendships developed in your most formative years? The threat of “I knew you when–”? All I know is, no matter what shape I’m in — physically, mentally or fiscally — if I knocked on the door of any of my fellow members, I would be taken in. And I have.

Everyone knows long friendships are cycles of closeness and distance, and this club is no exception. There were times when we all lived within a mile of each other. Now we are spread all over. But I carry a constant connection to those ivy days: my wife. That’s the greatest thing about long relationships: you share a past. And we share that with The Club.

I hadn’t seen Sam since 1985. I thought about him all the time, but there’s a flaw in doing that without updated contact: you tend to remember people as they were, not as they’ve become.

Sam had been a wrestler in high school. Stocky and solid, he was still fit in 1972. He didn’t smoke, but had a voice like gravel in a tin can. He also played the baritone sax, a rare talent, and so he majored in music. I met him on my first day of college, and through him met a plethora of wild and interesting personalities, the wildest being a sharp-witted wildman from Muzz-Sip named Billy. But Billy’s another story, one I’ll tell some other time.

Soon we all lived together: me, Sam, Billy, a guy named Jimbo and another wildman we dubbed “F.T.” You don’t make closer friends than that. We ate together (I was the cook, the poor bastards), shared the same friends, and threw huge parties. Our place became the social nexus of the student apartment complex. If you needed a beer, we usually had one. A hot meal? Pull up a chair! Want to meet girls? We knew a bunch. Poker was our religion and live music a specialty of the house, provided you liked bluegrass with baritone sax.

Like most college students in the ’70s, we drank too much. Some could handle it better than others and Sam, well, he tried, but it was obvious the grape could snag the better of him. He arrived after Christmas one year with a huge beer mug. On its side was stenciled “Bet You Can’t.” That mug held a full six-pack, the object being to chug it. I couldn’t do it. Nobody could, but Sam gave it hell. You could always tell when Sam was drinking because he’d be balancing on our third floor balcony railing, swinging a near-empty “Bet You Can’t” while crooning “Tennessee Stud” with a Satchmo lilt. Though his capacity was far less than his desire, I never saw him angry or violent. He was just too nice a guy.

By this time the grade point system was weeding out the not-so-serious. Sam was flagging. While I contemplated my senior year, Sam was floating somewhere between first and second semester sophomore. But he had a system. He was so likeable he could talk his way into any office, and would conclude each semester by facing the head honcho himself, Dean Brown. Sam would plead his case and the Powers That Be would relent, allowing him “just one more chance” for redemption. That happened three times. Finally, the shoe dropped.

Officially, since he had finally flunked out, Sam couldn’t live in the student apartments with us anymore. But he did anyway, and when we moved off-campus for my senior year, Sam moved too. That was to a place known as “The Pumpkin House.” Some girls named it, due to the color of the place. I hope the landlord got a good deal on that paint.

Sam’s grandfather died that fall, so he traveled to the family farm in the Midwest for the services. He returned with all sorts of goodies: tomatoes, corn, potatoes, carrots, homegrown popcorn — all fresh from the farm. Among those baskets were other goodies: mice and cockroaches. The roaches got so bad we finally “bombed” the Pumpkin. That worked for about a month, then the roaches came out of their bomb shelter. We trapped a total of thirteen mice that semester and even had a maple tree growing in the bathroom sink. That just shows how relaxed we’d become around each other; familiarity breeds filth.

Sam soon found gainful employment as a donut baker. Graduation came and I, with my hefty credentials, pursued a loftier course: I found less-than-gainful employment as a janitor in a local bar. I married my college girlfriend. A year later Sam married his. A better job finally took me away to Buffalo. Sam’s wife became pregnant and the Marines took him away to Parris Island.

Though I don’t think he intended to, Sam became a Lifer. After 1980, I saw very little of him. The night I remember best was when my wife and I returned to Florida in March of that year. It was freezing, the car was running badly, and the trip had been stressful and long. They rented a trailer just off-base in Beaufort, South Carolina. We ate homemade pizza, then out came the poker deck. As usual, neither of us had any money, so we played for fishing sinkers. Buck per ounce; no split shot, please. My tackle bucket was two pounds lighter when I left.

We visited them again when we went back North in 1981. Sam was doing better, a noncom now. My brother lived in Beaufort and Sam stopped by for a couple beers. He looked good. Still sunny, still in shape. He couldn’t hang though; Marines were keeping him busy.

New Year’s morning, 1984… Billy’s place in Rochester… Sam and his ever-growing family (two kids now) interrupted our hangovers. He spent most of the morning wrestling with his baby son. It was fun to watch him with his boy. It made me forget my headache. It also made me want to have kids.

A barbecue in 1985… His seven-year-old tried to teach our toddler to walk. It was hot and buggy and then thunder drove the women and kids indoors. Our host brought a bottle of Irish whiskey out to the grill and we flipped chicken in the rain. We burnt the crap out of that chicken. I couldn’t have tasted it anyway.

Then, well… That was it. Until last year.

Of all the members of The Club, I had kept up with Sam the least. As I said, I thought of him a lot, but what I thought of was the wrestler/sax guy; the guy with the “Bet You Can’t” mug and jarhead camos. In my mind he was always young and fit.

I can’t remember how the news came down. It was in a Christmas card, or a phone call, or… It doesn’t matter. All I remember is suddenly I knew Sam had Stage 4 colon cancer. When I heard, I denied it. Not Sam. He was always healthy as an ox. He ate my cooking for two years! What doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger, right? And he’s retired military — that means health care for life: regular physicals, cheap meds, hospitalization… He was smart enough to take advantage of that, wasn’t he? And what’s Stage 4, anyway? He’ll make it. Strong as an ox… Then someone informed me that there is no Stage 5.

It hit home when I got the email from F.T. There it was, in pixilated black and white. And in that message was Sam’s phone number and e-mail address. I was glad to have the information but was afraid to call. Why? I don’t know. Maybe because I wanted to remember Sam as the happy “Bet You Can’t” guy. I’d seen cancer many times, and I know how it changes its victims.

Then, he called me. It was early March, last year. He sure sounded the same. Didn’t sound weak. Was upbeat. We talked about old times and old guitars and what we’d been up to. He wanted the lyrics to a song I wrote way back when and I told him I’d oblige. Then he talked about his illness. Said he was losing muscle mass. “Funny thing,” he said. “You never lose weight in the places you want to.”

We e-mailed. I sent him all the pictures I could find of us Club members. Weddings, college days, family snapshots… At first he replied, then responses became scant. I called him around Halloween. Obviously, he was not getting better. He bragged facetiously about being able to “walk about a quarter mile.” His voice shook.

I found more pictures and e-mailed them. No response. I remembered his birthday in December and called one last time. He was in some kind of waiting room and the connection was bad. He mumbled about “palliative care” and was out of breath in a few sentences. That was our last conversation. He died this March first, leaving an empty chair in the Club.

Yeah, what is it about college friendships? How come those ties are so strong?

Odd how four short years can last a lifetime.

Big Sis
• Rick La Claire •

It may interest my readership (Hi, Mom!) to know that I have an older sister. She is six years older, to be precise, and that had a lot of advantages when I was young. As a matter of fact, it still does.

When I was young, we had a built-in babysitter. She being related, we got away with murder. Especially since about age eight, when I was already as tall as she was. We’d tease her and disobey her — nothing serious really (after all, she was my sister) — but we would torment her to our hearts’ content, knowing full well that she would never rat us out to Mom and Dad. She just wasn’t like that. I hope my parents paid her well.

My sister was popular with the boys in high school and usually had a boyfriend. Now I don’t know what made her so popular in that department — in fact just thinking about it gives me the heebie-jeebies — but it afforded me a unique window on the dating process. How? Because we were there! Yep, you guessed it, my Mom and Dad would let my sister go anywhere with her gentleman callers (even the drive-in movies — a.k.a. “The Passion Pit”) just as long as her two little brothers could go too.

Consequently, I saw every Elvis movie ever made by age 11. My little brother has a joke about that: ”Hey, what’s your favorite Elvis movie?” Of course you’re stymied — they all stank. Then he’d interject with “I like the one where he sings a song, gets in a fight, and kisses a girl.” So now, whenever “Elvis Week” hits the idiot box, I insist we watch every movie up to the fulfillment of those three criteria: the song, the fight, and the kiss — not necessarily in that order. In some Elvis movies it only takes five minutes. In others, up to 15 minutes — which is an eternity when watching an Elvis movie.

As a kid, I always thought my sister would be a famous actress. She appeared in such high school classics as “Life With Father” and “The King and I.” In “The King…” she had a major role: Tuptim, the slave girl/concubine. I was in sixth grade at the time, and though I was no big fan of musicals, I was impressed. There should be some kind of an award for a performance like that.

Those were the days… And the coolest thing was the music. Even the Elvis music… My big sis loved her 45s, and I don’t mean guns. I don’t know how collectable those old records are, but she had ‘em all. No “Sun” releases mind you, but we bopped to all of Elvis’ early RCA stuff (the tunes with Scotty Moore and Bill Black) right up through the schmaltzy Jordanaires backup. “All Shook Up,” “Jailhouse Rock,” “Don’t Be Cruel”… My baby brother and I played the grooves off that stuff. Here I was, maybe six or seven, getting exposed to the cutting edge of early rock n’ roll, all because I had the good fortune of having an older sister.

We cut our teeth on Dion and the Belmonts, the Rays, the Halos, the Orlons, Dee Dee Sharp, and Chubby Checker. Chubby Checker! First it was “The Twist” in 1960 (not to be confused with a 1962 spinoff by Joey Dee and the Starliters called “The Peppermint Twist” — “buppa doopa, buppa buppa doopa…”), then the Chubster comes back with “The Hucklebuck.” Not quite as big a seller, maybe because “hucklebuck” is urban slang for… uh… Well, if you don’t know what “hucklebucking” is, you’re probably better off. Ah, but then came “Let’s Twist Again Like We Did Last Summer.” What a concept! How come nobody else followed that idea? Your act would never die. I’d buy “Let’s Inna-Gadda-Da-Vida Again Like We Did Last Summer.” Wouldn’t you?

Of course it wasn’t all Elvis, Dion, and Chubby. My sister was a girl, and there was a lot of wimpy stuff in that collection too. Ricky Nelson (a slice of white bread — bleah); Pat Boone (a whole loaf of white bread — double bleah); the Beach Boys; lots of Paul Anka; the Four Seasons (you know, Frankie Valli may have walked like a man, but he shore didn’t sing like one).

But even among the wimpy stuff were some truly momentous cuts, namely “Dominique” by the Singing Nun. Remember that one? I challenge any man alive to sing more than the opening eight syllables. What the heck was that chick singing about? The tune’s in French, fer chrissakes! How’d that ever make it to the jukebox? And was the Singing Nun any relation to the Flying Nun? They have the same last name. And how come no Hollywood bigshot ever came up with the concept of the Flying Singing Nun? And why didn’t they release “Let’s ‘Dominique’ Again Like We Did Last Summer”? Missed opportunities, all. The poor Singing Nun, destined to be just another one-hit wonder.

And boy, are there a bunch of those in that pile. How about “Johnny Angel” by Shelly Fabares? Or “Bobby’s Girl” by Marcie Blane? Or “Johnny Jingo” by none other than the fabulous Hayley Mills? Ah, but the holy grail of all one-hit wonders just has to be “The Ballad of the Green Berets” by Sgt. Barry Sadler. That song has it all: vibrato vocals, a marching snare beat, trumpets, and a plea for all good men to “jump and die.” The first time I heard that song I rushed out to enlist. Sign me up, Uncle Sam! I want those silver wings on my chest! I didn’t get very far. I was only eight.

My big sis never did go to Hollywood. Nope. But she did go to college. She started at Elmira College and then transferred to Syracuse University, majoring in library science. I never understood the scientific angle, but I figured she was just doing it so she could reap the big bucks of being a librarian until her acting career took off. After all, she’d been Tuptim! No self-respecting Singing Nun fan would let a hefty credential like that go unflashed. But you know what? She actually made hay with that library thing. And last year, after several decades of deciphering Dewey Decimals, she retired.

She spent most of her working life in the D.C. area and I gotta give her credit: she did well. My brothers and I visited as often as we could and became familiar with Northern Virginia. When she announced that she and her husband would be retiring to the mountains of North Carolina, my baby brother and I decided we would make one last visit, for nostalgia’s sake.

This was last November, and when I boarded my flight in Melbourne it was sunny, 83 degrees, and I was in shorts and a t-shirt. In D.C. it was 40, raining, and threatening snow. I was underdressed indeed, and froze my butt waiting for my brother-in-law. But he was punctual, and shortly I was in that familiar house in Centerville. Soon the cocktails were flowing and she fetched that historic rack of vinyl and asked “Are you interested in any of these?”

Was I! My brother and I pounced on those 45s like Rush Limbaugh on a prescription pad. A veritable avalanche of childhood memories poured forth. Here we were again, eight and five years old, spinning the sacred discs on the old Montgomery Ward Monophonic (which we affectionately referred to as “The Chopper”). Remember record players? Remember taping a jackknife to the tone arm so the needle would track? Remember needles? But most of all, remember those great songs?

No, we weren’t playing the records (the Chopper died decades ago). We didn’t need to. One of us would seize a random platter from the rack and hold it up. Immediately we would launch into song: “A-well-a-bless-a mah soul, a-what’s a-wrong with me,” feigning the twist and literally grooving like the Pelvis himself, record after record, boring everyone else I’m sure, but having the time of our lives. (The booze may have helped, too.)

Anyway, two days later I was back in 83 and sunny, vaguely remembering that my sister said she’d “send them on.” Apparently their new mountain digs would not accommodate the old relics, and they could be mine if I desired. I presumed they would wind up in the garbage.

I still own and maintain a turntable. I peruse yard sales and am always game to buy old LPs. They’re cheap — usually a quarter or so — and I’ve found some great deals. Recently I even found Dark Side of the Moon in unplayed condition, replete with the poster and postcards, just a few doors down. I guess most folks don’t put the same stock I do in old vinyl. With the advent of the CD, I suppose most folks just can’t tolerate the hiss, pops, and skips. To me, those imperfections are the sound of my childhood, and I don’t mind a bit.

Then, nearly one month to the day after she said she’d “send them on,” the records arrived on my doorstep. As always, she was true to her word.

My wife and children groan when I break these things out, as do most of my friends. I like to brag that I can clear a room in two songs from this collection — that comes in handy when party guests linger too late — but I don’t play these things for them, I play them for me.

Everybody needs a big sister. Especially one with such a big heart. Thank you, Big Sis. Thank you very much!

First Fish
• Rick LaClaire •

My father was not a fisherman. He wasn’t much for the outdoors, period. To him, being outside meant work, or chores, more exactly. He never shirked mowing, shoveling snow or patching the roof, but Dad preferred indoor pastimes like watching TV. He and my brothers were TV sports fans. Be it football, baseball, basketball or hockey, they had the yen. I never caught the habit for some reason. My wife thanks me. That does not mean my father and I never fished together.

As a child, like now, we had fantastic neighbors. Next door was Mr. Martin. He was older than Dad and an avid outdoorsman. He hiked the Adirondacks, mowed with a push mower (so’s not to scare the birds) and grew huge begonias. He knew every plant, bug, bird and critter by name in the North Woods, and I became his student very early on. Mr. Martin was always up to something interesting. Be it scouring the heavens with his massive telescope or feeding chickadees in the palm of his hand, the guy, to me, was a living field guide. The biggest favor Mr. Martin ever did though, was instilling in me a lifelong love of fishing.

By 1961, Pleasant Lake, by local standards, had been “fished-out years ago.” Despite being fronted by a sign claiming it was “The Home Of the Black Bass” (along with forty-one other lakes in New York) that “fished-out” prophecy rang true if it were trophies you were after. But there were many overlooked species in that pond, species willing to spend their existence putting a smile on the face of a kid. And it was in Pleasant Lake, guided by Mr.Martin, that I caught my first fish at the tender age of seven.

Whoever invented sunfish must have been a kid. Sunfish were made for kids. They require no skill to catch (they’ll hit a gob of baloney on a safety pin), put a bend in your rod, and treat you again in the frying pan. No one bothered much with sunnies in the Home Of the Black Bass and they were plentiful and fat.

The bluegill is the most abundant sunfish, and if not a bullhead catfish, the bluegill was nearly every Upstate kid’s first catch. My first catch was more special. Mine was a pumpkinseed sunfish, and a big one at that. I caught two more that day and one whopping yellow perch. My older brother and Dad were there too, and by day’s end we had a bucketful. I was hooked for life.

So what’s so special about catching your first fish? Let me put it this way: though it was almost fifty years ago and I have no photographs, I have captured that moment for life. I can see the color of the rowboat we rented, hear the squeak of the oars, and hear my father as he cautioned: “Don’t horse him.” Even more vivid are the feelings; the thrill and the pride. I relive that every time I catch a fish. That first fish stays with you long after the bones have hit the garbage can.

There were no bones that night, though. A 10-quart galvanized bucket may not be a luxury aquarium, but those fish made it home alive. I released them in a fishless creek back in the woods, in black water barely deep enough to cover their backs. I was going to create my very own fishing hole. At first light the next day, I returned to check on my stock. They all lay on the bank, pale and lifeless. I watched as a local dog picked up a dead sunny and ran off into the bushes. I was only seven and knew nothing of pH, dissolved oxygen or species-specific water temperatures. My solution? I’d just have to go fishing again.

As big an impact as my first fish had on me, I don’t believe everyone takes it the same way. My daughter caught her first fish at age four. At four, I believe you are bombarded with so much new information on a daily basis that the impact of a first fish might just get lost in the shuffle. To prevent that, we took pictures. One hung for two years on the fridge. Now it is safely ensconced in an album of other fishing pictures, which unfortunately was full by the time my son caught his first.

My daughter’s first fish was a whiting, caught in the surf at Spessard North. The sun was going down, everything had that late-day golden glow, and she was smiling ear to ear with a deeply bent rod dragging the foot-long beast across the sand. A moment in time…

In the late ’90s, we had a fantastic seagrass bed at the river-end of my street in Melbourne Beach. It’s gone now, but back then it was a hotspot for redfish, trout, jacks, ladyfish, snook — just about anything you wanted. My son’s first fish was a small trout or a ladyfish (I’m not sure), caught right there. The reason I’m not sure is because I have two pictures, both taken when he was three. In both pictures he is in my canoe, in the same shirt, wearing the same “Rugrats” life preserver. Most likely, it was the same trip. But by the look on his face, I think it was the ladyfish. A couple of years later he drew a picture of the occasion, entitled “Caching My First Fish.” Arrows point to “Me” and “Dad.” But alas, I cannot tell the species from the drawing. Obviously it was a pretty important occasion if he drew a picture of it.

Neither my son nor my daughter fish much on their own. But they’ll join Dad on the beach when he goes, and neither will pass up a plate of the fried winnings. It doesn’t bother me they were not bitten as badly by the fishing bug. I have the pictures. Those moments were just as much fun for me as them. Never deny you live vicariously through your children.

I was present when most of my nephews caught their first fish. Thank you, Mr. Bluegill. I’ve hooked tarpon that were five feet long, landed mahi dolphin that tipped the scales at forty pounds, lost a sailfish or two and even won the snapper pool on the Miss Canaveral, but for some reason I’ll still fish for sunnies. Throw a couple kids in the mix and it’s all the better. There’s nothing like seeing a young face light up when the bobber dances. The same goes for old faces, by the way.

It had been a long time since I had the pleasure of turning a youngster on to the joy of catching that first fish. My children and nephews are all past their wonder years by now and I simply have no more subjects to initiate. Or so I thought. Then we had visitors from Buffalo for Easter.

I met Keith in 1974 when I was a junior in college. He lived below me and I remember the moment vividly. As usual, my roomies and I were drinking, the night was warm and we crowded our tiny student-complex balcony singing and banging away on whatever instruments were at hand. “Instruments” in those days could be anything from a baritone sax to an empty whiskey bottle; I was on guitar. Suddenly this red-haired kid bounded upstairs with a banjo: “What kind of music do you play?”

“Music” was hardly the word. I meant to say “Jug Band” but blurted “Bluegrass”.

“May I join you?”

Well, Keith joined me for the next twelve years. Not only did he introduce me to Bluegrass, he also introduced me to things like stage presence, dynamics, tight vocals, and how to duck a beer bottle without missing a note. He was an usher at my wedding, and I an usher at his. He got me my first good-paying job, at a workbench right next to him. And even after decades of having not worked together, we’ve remained friends; brothers, as it were.

Keith and his wife Marilyn have visited several times over the years, and this April it was with their college-age daughter, Amy. While packing fishing gear for the beach I casually asked Amy if she’d ever caught a fish. I was more than surprised to hear “No”.

“Why, that’s child abuse,” I said half-seriously. Alright! I whispered internally. Another First Fish! I’d thought those days were behind me.

Spring came late this year. And to top it off, at the height of our holy Tourist Season, the Powers That Be decided to “re-nourish” our beach, rendering our access unfit for any piscatorial recreation. We chose Coconut Point, a few miles south, for Amy’s initiation.

Conditions were far from perfect. Heavy shore break, onshore winds and a ripping southbound current required a quarter pound of lead, and even that wouldn’t hold. But I was determined. I sectioned a clam and baited two hooks. Then “The Surfer” appeared.

This kid — obviously a tourist — was apparently trying to learn to bodyboard. He knew nothing of shore current, or bodyboarding for that matter, and kept drifting into my line of cast. Seasoned surfers have always been courteous to fishermen in my experience, and are usually aware of their surroundings. This kid… After a brush with my monofilament (“What was that?!”) he got the idea and cleared out.

Then came the calico crabs. Those bastards can strip a clam from your line without a tremor, and they were thick. But we finally caught a fish, and Amy scored her First. Just look at that smile.

Thank you, Mr. Bluegill.

Thank you, Mr. Bullhead.

And for Easter Sunday, thank you Mr. Whiting.

One more First Fish…

Spanner in the Works
• Rick LaClaire •

I like to do things, especially when those things involve the outdoors. Fishing, hunting, hiking, canoeing — anything that brings me in contact Florida wildlife has always held an attraction for me. But wildlife is not my only attraction, I like “wild life” also. Dining, drinking, dancing… A good pub crawl has always been high on my list, and my wife and I still enjoy each other’s company on a night out, and have made it a weekly institution.

Things like that are good for a marriage, I think. Years ago, when attending a wedding reception, we were seated with a group of young couples we had never met. When during the course of conversation we revealed that we had been married for 30-some-odd years, the couple across from us inquired about our “secret.” In essence, “How do you keep things from getting boring?” Our response was simple and immediate: keep dating. They seemed puzzled at first: “You mean date other people?” “Of course not,” I replied. “Keep dating each other. Like you did when you first met.”

Melbourne Beach is no Key West. While I love my hometown dearly, I wouldn’t recommend it for a “night on the town.” We have the beach (which is all I need, really) and there are a of couple bars, even a four-star restaurant down by the pier, but after 16 years of Friday nights out, we’ve pretty much done it all several times over. Yeah, we filter up to Indialantic occasionally and sometimes cross the bridge for tapas and martinis, but after a while you begin to take the local nightlife for ho-hum granted.

You get used to things. I know how the ‘ritas taste at the Cantina and the O, and could name them blindfolded. Give me a plate of wings from Long Dogger’s and Meg’s and I’ll tell them apart. I know what song my favorite local band is going to open with and I know I’m not leaving the Red Shoe without hearing “Something” (by the Beatles, not James Taylor) on the piano. You know what to expect. You should be reveling in that — that luxury of experience — but no, you let yourself become bored.

The same with your job; each day’s like the day before. And your home; mow on Saturday, water on Wednesday, clean the bathrooms on Thursday, keep the pool topped off, feed the ‘maters… On and on… The same routine.

You begin to crave  change. You crave anything that might shake the starch out of your humdrum existence. A new job? A new car? A tattoo? A bellybutton ring? Anything! Anything to mix it up. And then… You get it.

A spanner in the works. Your legs knocked out from beneath you. A freight train through your living room. It comes out of nowhere, totally unexpected. And I got mine. It came at 3:30 on a Saturday morning. In the middle of a restless night’s sleep, after a night out on the town, I felt as if someone had driven a bayonet through my guts.

I couldn’t even stand. I was puking, running a fever, soaked in sweat, and in excruciating pain. I knew immediately that this was something serious. My poor date (my wife)… Just hours ago we were wining and dining contentedly at a place we’d been a hundred times, and now she was doing something totally new: calling an ambulance.

I am not going to get medical here. The details of my sudden illness have no bearing on the point of this article. Suffice it to read that I spent nine days in a hospital bed. That was also something totally new, a real starch-shaker.

The first days of my hospital stay are a blur. I was sick, and on very heavy pain medication. My wife came twice a day, sometimes with my son. I apologize for nodding off in the middle of things, looking so bad and complaining so much. I was drugged and sick. By Wednesday I was skipping pain shots and starting to respond to the treatment. That’s when things started to hit home.

Once the fog of dilaudid lifted, I realized I had a life, a job, and a family. What had just happened? A hole had been punched in that continuum. That’s exactly what it felt like. One minute you’re dining in an all-too-familiar restaurant by candlelight. Then, four days later, you’re coming out of an opioid haze in a hospital bed. Where did those days go? Into the hole…

I’m not a regular in hospitals. I generally try to avoid them. I eat right. I exercise.  I have drinks, but don’t drink to oblivion. I watch my blood pressure. I even take a fiber supplement! And I do it all because I don’t want to wind up in a hospital bed. Ah, but there’s one health factor that steps on all the rest: age. I described my malady to one of my customers and his response was “Been there, welcome to growing old.”

I used to like being older. I felt every line on my face, every scar was a story to be told. Once you’re in your 50s you’ve done a few things, been a few places. Your wealth of experience permeates every aspect of your purpose. You become expert at what you do, be it your job, being a parent, or fixing the toilet. Then you wake up in a hospital bed with four days missing from your life. Age is now my enemy.

Those last few days in the hospital I was little more than a grouch. The healthier I became, the more I began to worry. Customers weren’t paying to terms. Bills were due. Orders had been lost due to my lay up — and in times like these, I need all the work I can get. It’s hard doing collections from a hospital bed. Quotes, too. Suddenly I missed my old humdrum life. I couldn’t wait to get back to my boring work routine.

I was released on a Sunday. The first thing I wanted to do when I got home was work. Well, that wasn’t the first thing I wanted to do, but the kids were home, so I settled on work. I was told to take it easy. I was on oral meds now and had a restricted diet. I lasted about a half-hour in the workshop. I was still weak.

I did way too much my first week home. A doctor’s examination affirmed it that Thursday. I was not progressing and needed updated tests. I was also not to move forward on my diet. That killed any thought of “date night” that Friday. Our local ho-hum nightlife suddenly seemed very special.

Forty years ago, Joni Mitchell sang a song called “Big Yellow Taxi,”the upshot of which was “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” Yeah, it’s corny now, but it wasn’t back in 1970. The song lamented the proliferation of parking lots, and in the end, either the cops or a taxi take her boyfriend away. Everything changes, and it can happen in a heartbeat. One day you’re looking at trees, the next day it’s corralled Sonatas and Sentras. One day you’re in love, the next day she’s gone. One minute you’re eating stromboli and drinking merlot and four days later you wake up in a hospital bed. You really don’t know how good you have it till it’s taken away, and don’t blink, it can be quick and savage. Like having your legs kicked out from beneath you. A freight train through your living room. A spanner in the works…

Is It Just Me?
By Rick LaClaire

“Some folks never smile
Some folks do, some folks do
Others laugh through guile
That’s what some folks do”
– “Some Folks” by Stephen Foster (1826-1864)

It’s been said that I am opinionated. In my opinion, I am not.

But if I am, what’s wrong with that? I just like a good argument. There’s nothing as heady as a constant counterpoint embellished with a few unsubstantiated statistics. It sure keeps the conversation going (and if you add alcohol, it can get downright lively). Don’t we all, in our heart of hearts, just love to hear ourselves talk? Or is it just me?

Picture yourself married to a beautiful woman — your soulmate, the mother of your children — and you wish to show your appreciation by taking her to a four-star restaurant on your anniversary. Valet parking, cocktails on the terrace, a couple of bucks in the piano player’s snifter, and soon you are being seated. Others are being seated too, and at the table next to you is a young couple. She’s cute and young, and he — he — is wearing a ball cap. Indoors. At the table. Backwards. The hat, that is… Is it just me, or is that wrong? And would it be wrong if I asked him to remove it (“Out of respect for the ladies, sir”)? Ah, the quandaries of being opinionated. But of course, in my opinion, I am not opinionated. I’m just concerned for the young man. By wearing his hat backwards he is not taking advantage of its UV protection. And man, that candlelight… Just loaded with deadly UV rays…

Now everybody’s seen this: it’s election time. The roads are littered with “Vote For Me” signs (they’ve been out since August). It’s down to the wire now, and as you pull onto the causeway, heading back beachside after a hard day’s labor on the mainland, there he is. You recognize the face immediately — it’s at every street corner in the county. And he’s not alone. His wife, six kids (right down to the baby), and even the family dog are there to greet you, waving and smiling like you’re an old friend. It’s ninety degrees out, all you want to do is get home and fall into a cold bourbon, and this nitwit thinks he can grab your vote at the last minute just by being there. Waving. With a phony smile. For some reason he’s not even breaking a sweat. My reaction to this is always the same: I’m not voting for anyone who puts his family at risk during rush hour on a buzzing causeway. Does this tactic work? I’d like to see the statistics.

Is it just me, or do talking blobs of mucus make you want to put a pitchfork through your flat screen? You know what I’m talking about. See, it isn’t just me. I will never buy that particular brand of cough syrup because of those commercials.

Same with the gecko people. First it was the lizard, then cavemen, then stacks of money with eyes, and now a panoramic view of Charlie Daniels’ dentures as he savages a violin. Over and over and over… I don’t care how much they can save me on my car insurance, I hate those commercials so much I’m stickin’ with the rat bastard company that cancelled my homeowner’s policy just out of spite. I wonder if my health insurance covers reattaching my nose?

Is it just me, or was the world a better place before “The Colon Lady”? Yup, you guessed it, another product I shall never sample. My bowels could be jammed with half a metric ton of quick-set concrete and I would not grace that company with a single cent of my hard-earned pay. You think the Colon Lady has any friends? “Hey honey, let’s call up the Colon Lady and get bloated and constipated tonight!” Not likely… And what about her professional life? Think she might be typecast? I’ve got a feeling… once the Colon Lady, always the Colon Lady.

Now, I can hear you saying, “LaClaire, you watch way too much TV.” You know, actually, I don’t. I don’t need to. Commercial television is so ad-saturated these days that it only takes a half-hour to get the whole plan. I’ve counted over twelve commercials in a row sometimes. I don’t remember strings like that in years past. Is it just me? And what about those little pop-ups that keep appearing while you’re watching your show? It’s as if twelve commercials in a row every five minutes just isn’t enough. No, we have to ad-saturate you even during the program. Too bad if you’re closed-captioned or reading subtitles. I wonder who came up with that idea. I want to meet that person and engage him in conversation. And every time he opens his mouth, I’d like to loudly interrupt with “‘Mad Men’ on at ten!”

There. I did it. I went on for four paragraphs complaining about television. You know, things must be pretty good if you’ve got time to sit around and whine about something you can just turn off. Is it just me, or are we way too overloaded with information technology?

Remember pay phones? Try and find one now. I still use them, when I can. Why? Because I am The Last Person On the Planet Without A Cellphone. It probably won’t last long, because formerly, I was The Last Person On the Planet Without A Computer. And previously, I was The Last Person On the Planet To Buy A Leisure Suit.

So, there is a pattern. I guess I catch on late. Ask my wife and daughter, I was never a slave to fashion.

Remember fax machines? I was late with that, too. I paid a lot for that plain-paper dinosaur, and I thought I was the king of the information age. Imagine, being able to fax quotes instead of delivering them, right from your office! Receiving drawings and contracts the same day! The same hour! Yep, I was the king. That was 1994. Then came 1995. Suddenly every customer’s desk was decorated with a new purveyor of information: the PC. Took me three more years to catch up with that. I remember Al Gore — the guy who invented the computer — saying that one day every household in America would have a computer. I laughed at that, then. Then I laughed again as I bought one. Then another. Then one for the kid. Then another for the kid…

So I have a fax, several TVs, several radios, a computer, and two separate land lines. Is it just me, or isn’t that enough? Civilization can reach me in any corner of my personal space. So why do I need to be bothered further while I’m driving, fishing, boating, gardening, or mowing the lawn? My kids are addicted to their cellphones. And now they’re not content to even talk to one another. They have to “text.” It’s constant with them. In the car, at the bus stop, in the Mall, on the beach… Enough! Too much information! Is it just me?

Beach renourishment is ugly, wasteful and deadly to the beach biome. Is it just me? Is it just me, or does living in a neighborhood where all the houses have to be the same color defeat the purpose of home ownership altogether? Are low-rider pants the funniest trend since the forementioned leisure suit, or is it just me?

Opinionated? Me? Not in my opinion. It’s just me.

It is January as I write this. Presently, Florida is suffering the longest cold snap ever. Usually, a cold snap is just that: a quick chill. Not so, this winter of 2010. I have counted six mornings now with readings in the 20s and 30s, with more on the way. We’re actually having a winter in central Florida, something most of us came here to escape.

I’m not equipped for this. My old mackinaw has long ago been given to the moths. I used my winter gloves to hold live blue crabs while I halved them — they were no good after that. My wool watch cap sat on the dashboard of my truck for a week last winter and the sun disintegrated it. And long pants? I have one pair, not counting dress slacks, and they’re presently stained from a certain hunting experience I shall soon relate. Let’s face it, my wardrobe is Florida, not Maine.

Not so in my snowbound youth. Deep snow, freezing temperatures, and school and business closures were part of life in Upstate New York. We planned on it. But occasionally we received more than we planned. Occasionally, even for the most seasoned, you needed a little help. That was when we relied on the kindness of others; the loyalty of good friends and neighbors.

Like that winter in ’62 when it snowed so deep the plows couldn’t get out. The milkman too, apparently. Three neighbors with a toboggan took grocery orders and trudged miles through deep snow, “so the babies could get their milk.” My mother says it’s just what neighbors did back then. I call it “The splendor of action.”

I’ve been helped by a lot of people over the years, many times by strangers. But after all the fear we’ve had pumped into us over the last ten years, it’s easy to become mistrustful. We figure everyone is working some kind of “angle” to steal our money, our job, our seat on a plane, or even our identity. Every once in a while we have to be reminded that there are a lot of good-hearted people out there. And so it happened to us…

We heard shots in the distance. Other hunters were up this road. We’d seen tire tracks on the way in. My truck was mired so completely that nothing could drive around us. We were blocking them. I left a sign on the windshield.

No shovel, no crowbar, not even a rope — but, lo and behold, I had a Sharpie, and a map on which to write. The Sharpie was a mite fine, so I doubled the lettering:

STUCK went for help

I pinned it beneath a windshield wiper. Thinking back, I suppose the note was a bit tautological.

Other than ammo, the only items of any value in the truck were the rifles, so we decided to carry them. It was a few miles to the ranger station and we had no idea how long it would take. I remembered seeing blasted-out cars and trucks in the forests and fields of my youth and wondered if that wasn’t how they got there: some pissed-off hunter. My heart was in my bowels when we took those first steps out. If and when we returned, would my vehicle be intact?

Any notion that this would be easy was dashed at the first bend in the road. This was a previous bog, one we’d had problems negotiating on the way in.

“Well, it looks like we broke in our boots,” I said as the black water lapped at our knees. “I’m no longer afraid to get these guys wet.” My son agreed.

Conditions worsened as we continued. How did we get back here? How stupid of me… We soon approached a pool that appeared too deep to wade. I remembered water on the hood. A wide circumvention of the hole was undertaken. This was through tussock-type vegetation in a foot or so of standing water. Beneath were rotten logs, unseen and slippery under the black sheen. This was the perfect environment in which to break an ankle. At one point my son said he saw something slither away. I told him it was his imagination and to keep going, but my eyes were all for cottonmouths after that. Eventually, we were back on the track and new pools appeared; forgotten pools I had laughed and splashed my way through previously. They were fun no more. What had I been thinking?

“At least it’s a nice day,” I said aloud. It was true. It was mid-afternoon. The sun was shining. No breeze and about 60 degrees — a great day to go hunting. But instead, we were slip-sliding on submerged timber with numb feet, sweating the fate of my abandoned vehicle.

After a half-hour of slogging we looked back. “I can still see the truck,” the boy said. Yes, there it was, a disappointing white speck in the mud. Even though our pace was brisk, we were literally treading water.

By the time the guns were becoming heavy, the terrain dried out. Soon we spotted swirling buzzards. Ordinarily that’s an ominous sign. We knew what it meant.

“There’s the gut pile,” I commented. We were getting close. Rutted sand gave way to a hard washboard road and finally, after a little more than an hour’s trudge, we approached the ranger’s station. We were thirsty, beat, and our feet were cold and wet.

The ranger took one look at us and said: “Looks like you got stuck.” He said it so nonchalantly that the next line didn’t sink in right away: “I can’t help you.” I suppose I expected to hear that, then he went on: “But somebody will. Give it a few minutes.”

We needed a few minutes. We sat on the edge of the porch and I opened a water bottle I brought. My son took off his boots. I guess I thought the ranger would make a phone call or something. Maybe he knew of some secret towing service out here. We sure couldn’t find one. A few minutes went by. Still no action on his part. He was shooting the breeze with some campers. I stood and milled a bit, hoping to get his attention. No response. Maybe I needed to say something.

Then, through the gate appeared a hulking red SUV. Dogs barked from within. The driver greeted the ranger like a old friend. The ranger nodded to me, then asked the driver: “Think you can help these boys out?” It was just that simple.

Their names were Tom and Tom, a father and son, and they were out for an afternoon of wingshooting with their dogs. As we four glided effortlessly over the sodden roads, I apologized profusely for intruding on their hunt. I offered money for their trouble and I think that slightly offended them. “This won’t take long,” the elder Tom said. Tom the younger added, “We’ve all been there.”

Then, far ahead, there it was, a little white speck in the mud. “That your truck?”

“Yes,” I replied. We were slipping and splashing; the road was worsening. “How’d you ever get that thing in here?” young Tom asked. I wanted to say something like “Good sense is finite; idiocy has unlimited mileage,” but only managed “I don’t know.”

The tow strap was applied three times that day. Once in the initial mire, twice more in pockets we had roiled up with our traffic. Their vehicle was made for this element, ours wasn’t. The dogs were silent and patient, as was my son. We emerged on the main loop road covered in mud. My thanks were profuse. It had only taken a half hour. I asked Tom and Tom their last name and they declined — perhaps they sensed I wanted to send them a gift of some kind. They wanted neither publicity nor remuneration. “Pay it forward,” was the elder’s wage, and when I see the chance, I shall.

Hunters are not fishermen. Yes, you can be both, but they are different mindsets. In fishing, you can release your catch and then knock back a beer. Hunting is serious; there’s no such thing as kill and release, and alcohol is strictly verboten. Fishermen gab and joke while they cast. Hunters observe strict silence and pride themselves on their lack of presence. Fishermen brag and lie. Hunters don’t bother; theirs is a sad satisfaction, the knowledge that death begets life, and that “This ain’t no party/This ain’t no disco/This ain’t no foolin’ around.”

The ranger summed it up on our mud-streaked way out: “Hunters do things like this for people. They’re always willing to help.” So do many fishermen, I might add, but then there’s the guy that sees you catch a fish and plows right up next to you. Or the guy who leaves his catfish to die on the beach (ouch!). Or the fish hog who catches twice as many blues as he wants or needs and leaves them to rot in the public garbage can at the end of your street. To this day, I have never met an inconsiderate hunter.

So I thank you, Tom and Tom, for proliferating my faith in good people. And thanks to another Tom, my son, for being so mature and uncomplaining, for helping with all his strength and sharing his technology.

Three Toms, demonstrating the splendor of action.

(To read Part One – click here: http://thebeachsideresident.com/2010/02/this-happened-to-us-part-i/)

At age eleven I was given a gift which lasted ten years, a subscription to Outdoor Life magazine. Within were a wealth of stellar outdoor writers:  Ray Bergman, Byron Dalrymple, Joe Brooks, Jack O’Conner, Stu Apte… I only wish I could be among their number. Their stories were more than entertainment, they were inspiration.

Wintertime was a house-bound time in Northern New York, but that monthly arrival of global bloodsport transported me to lands warm and unknown: Florida for tarpon on a fly, Africa for Cape Buffalo, and Mexico for bass. And in the heat of summer, just the opposite. Alaska for caribou… Grizzly in the high mountains…

Even the ads were enjoyable. In the back were page after page of hunting and fishing lodges, listed by state and province. Replete with photos of the bag, these little thumbnails of exotica were the stuff of outdoor dreams. Ah, but the coolest thing about Outdoor Life was a full-page comic strip called “This Happened To Me!”

I love comics. Always have, still do. I started with Popeye and Donald Duck. Then came serious DC stuff like Superman and Batman. It finally culminated with the Marvel brand; super-sophisticated art starring Captain America, Sergeant Fury (and his Howling Commandos), The Fantastic Four and Daredevil. Anything drawn, anything with word balloons and visual onomatopoeia like BAM and BUDDA-BUDDA-BUDDA and KA-BLOOEY — that stuff just drew me in. And so it was with “This Happened To Me!”

Trampled by hippos! Elephants amok! Snakebit! Quicksand! You name it, it happened to somebody, and there were the cartoons to prove it. Hey, if they made a comic about it, it must be true. They solicited entries and I tried many times. In my long and not-so-illustrious career as an outdoorsman I’ve certainly had a few scrapes. But somehow, squashing a toad barefoot or digging redworms out of day-old cow pies didn’t rate. Comparatively, my outdoor life was tamer than the outdoor lives of others. That was, until last week…

It is December as I write this; hunting season. As my readership (hi, Mom!) may recall, my teenage son and I began hunting together last year. On six glorious occasions we invaded select local Wildlife Management Areas, finally returning victorious. In other words, we shot one squirrel. Three times. And we ate it. And it was good.

We had a lot of rain this fall. Not like Tropical Storm Fay last year, but it came late and stayed long. The ranger at the gate put it aptly: “It’s wet back there. But you’ll find that out.” So we were warned, but figured the savvy we’d earned the previous season gave us license to ford any quagmire these boonies could pitch. Boy, were we wrong. We were not twenty minutes into this season’s first foray and found ourselves hopelessly ensnared in a veritable tar pit, deep in the boondocks, miles from any form of salvation.

How could this happen? I drive a truck and I know these backroads. We drove them weekly last season. Always got through. And what about all those years in Buffalo, Rochester, and Watertown when I drove in slush and slop and never got stuck — and that was in those dinosaur V-8 Lead Sleds with bald tires and three inches of clearance! I drive a truck fer chrissakes! Well, I soon learned my “truck” was little more than a glorified golf cart when “it’s wet back there.”

It was my fault. We’d had a couple of “wows” in some big puddles and I was feeling pretty invincible. A bit of a sideslip, some black water over the hood, mud on the mirror… We’re hunters, kid, nothing can keep us from the killing fields. Then, whump. We bottomed out. Hard.

Reverse, that’s what you do. It always worked in snow. Rock it out. Reverse, drive, reverse, drive… Rock it out.

Or dig it in.

I dug it in. Ba-a-a-ad…

We pushed for awhile, entirely in vain. I crammed sticks under the tires to gain traction. That didn’t work. My son, brave soul, even began to dig with his bare hands. No gain. The vehicle’s frame was resting on the mound between the tracks, wheels spinning. Well, one wheel anyway… It was then I realized “rear wheel drive” means “one wheel drive.” While the passenger side spun madly, the driver’s side was still. I also noticed water swirling around a stick I had planted. This water was moving; we were mired in a creek or spring of sorts. Meanwhile, the black goo was seeping into the cab and truck bed.

The boy produced his cell phone and attempted to reach the ranger station. Surely, ours was not a unique situation. Hunters must get stuck back here every season, right? The ranger would know whom to contact. After dialing the numbers on the map and on my license, enduring several long holds and line switches, it was not to be. Those numbers are unlisted.

“The Yellow Pages,” my boy said. “I’ve got the the Yellow Pages on my phone, I think.”

I’ve never been a fan of cellphones. I find them a nuisance. But standing in that cold black water, looking around and seeing no sign of humanity except for a sinking Ford Ranger, I was beginning to appreciate them. “Look up towing services,” I said.

He stabbed the device with his fingers a few times, tilted it, stabbed again, sighed and said “Not enough bars.”

“But you just made a call.”

“I can call,” he qualified, “but I can’t seem to get the Yellow Pages.”

My mind swirled. Why did Superman only exist in the comics? Boy, could we use him now. Even Batman would be a blessing, and he didn’t have any superpowers. Okay, no Superman, no Batman, no ranger, no Yellow Pages… Who ya gonna call?

“Hi, honey. Guess where we are?” I tried to sound cheerful.

“Guess where I am?” She replied.

“I asked you first… Okay, we’re stuck. We’re stuck way out in the boonies and we need some phone numbers from the Yellow Pages. I mean, like, we’re REALLY stuck. We need a tow.”

“Well I’m at the mall. There are no telephone books here.”

“Oh yes there are! There has to be a phone booth.”

“Phone booths went out with Superman,” she stated. Then I heard a phrase we would hear several times that day: “I can’t help you.”

I can’t help you. The four loneliest words in the English language.

The cab floor was now covered with mud and it was creeping farther into the bed. Ammo, cooler, jackets and guns were now at risk. I was worried about the guns most; mud is definitely a no-no with them. I opened the hatch and pulled them out. They were still in their cases, and I laid them on a patch of high ground. The ammo would be okay; it was in a waterproof box. The cooler, likewise. Our jackets, well, they would need laundering. As a last whim I also rescued a roll of toilet paper — you never knew when that might come in handy. I could feel something boiling within my guts already.

“Dad! I found the Yellow Pages!” Yes! Thank you, Alexander Graham Cell… “Dad! What city?”

I then remembered that many years ago I made a set of signs for a towing company. Why not them? “Hey, try Acme Towing.” Of course Acme Towing is not the real name, but you’ll soon realize no towing company needs the endorsement I’m about to give.

“Dad! Here they are. Talk to ‘em.” A sweet Southern voice greeted me. I felt relieved. “Do you guys work out in the boondocks?” I began.

“Lordy, I didn’t know there were any boondocks left! We work anywhere, sugar.”

“Well, uh, we need a tow. Bad. We’re out at the wildlife management area. Road Two. When you pull in, the ranger will give you a map.”

The upshot was $75 and mileage. I had a credit card, and as I watched my truck slowly sinking in the mire, money was no object. “Forty minutes,” she said at last. What a relief. It was all that easy.

“We’ve got forty minutes,” I told my son. “Let’s load up and see if we can find some squirrels.”

Guns and ammo were uncased. “Don’t go far. We don’t want to miss our tow.” Not to worry. Scarcely were we loaded when the cellphone rang. “It’s them, Dad.” I took the phone.

“Ah’m so sorry. I can’t help you. Our boys don’t go out there. We sold our four-wheeler years ago.”

“What? You said — ”

“And we tried Joe’s — he’s got one. But he don’t go out there neither, sugar. He just don’t want to. I can’t help you. Sorry…” Click. Suddenly that toilet paper was looking mighty important.

“We have to walk, Dad.”

My boy was right. But even if we did make it to the ranger station (which could take who knows how long) could he help us? Would we be taking a long, wet walk for nothing? Did I just lose my truck? Oh Superman, where are you?

Learn the answers to these and many other of life’s questions in “This Happened To Us!” Part II.

I was told you can’t grow them from seed. Oh, sure, they’ll sprout, but they won’t make it. And forget about fruit. These plants are inbred, crossbred and grafted; the trees are sterile if grown from their own seed. No sex organs… No breath of life… No grapefruit.

Well, it sure is ugly.

Three of the best years of my life were spent living next to a grapefruit grove. It was my first beachside residence and it was 20 years ago. Things were mighty different then. For one thing, the era of “house-flippers” and sub-prime mortgages had yet to emerge; property was actually affordable. What that meant was that your neighbor was probably on the same economic level as you. Maybe even a little lower… And that made them easier to communicate with. And a lot more friendly…

Another curious thing about those days was that a working citrus grove existed at all, beachside. As a matter of fact, that very piece of land today is now a community park, replete with ball fields. Yeah, soccer may be fun (I never thought so), but I miss the old grove.

The people who worked there, lived there. They didn’t drive Mercedes-Benzes or Beemers. They worked the land. I came to know them, their children and their dogs, and found them a pleasant diversion from the suit-and-tie types I dealt with in my workday. My friendships with the citrus folk had many perks, and one of the best was free fruit.

The grove was under contract with a Japanese concern. The fruit was of such high quality that I was told they sold for two or three dollars apiece in Japan. When that pink juice was dripping off your chin, you couldn’t help but agree. And as long as I didn’t complain about things — the noises, their pets, the smell of diesel and pesticide — I was welcome to the excess fruit. There was plenty of excess.

It seemed we had grapefruit year round. About the time the winter crop would run out, another crop, “June-blooms” they called them, would arrive. They were homely things, bell-shaped, crusty and thick-skinned; less desirable commercially, but with all the flavor and juice of the prize-winning “pancakes” the Japanese preferred. June-blooms were yours for the taking. We took many.

There were also specimen plants in the grove. One of the workers had a short row of white grapefruit. I prefer whites to pinks, probably because that’s all there was when I was a kid. If there were any pinks in Watertown, New York in those winters of the ‘50s and ‘60s, they must have been a nickel more a pound, because my Mom didn’t buy ‘em. White was all we ever had then. And I’ll tell you, that tart, squirt’n’yer-eye freshness was mighty welcome that time of year. It was a taste of Florida when all around seemed Alaska.

As we settled into beachside residency, my friend Ken bought a house on the mainland. The lot was small and the backyard was home to the largest grapefruit tree I have ever seen. It shaded nearly the whole property. It dropped fruit like rain, and — by golly — they were whites, the best I’d tasted. Aah, the memories they evoked. Dark winter mornings with icicles outside the windows… A schmaltzy mother-of-toilet-seat breakfast table with chrome pipes for legs… Captain Kangaroo on the Zenith… And an avocado plastic bowl with a hemisphere of subtropical heaven staring business-end up at you.

So I saved the seeds from one of Ken’s grapefruit and put them in a 35mm film can. Remember those? Anyway, I forgot about it. The seeds, that is.

Some weeks later we left the grove and moved into the only house I will ever own. While unpacking, I found a 35mm film can buried in a box of kitchen knick-knacks. Wondering what was inside, I picked up the can and shook it. No sound. I popped the lid and was greeted by the sight of what appeared to be spaghetti, solidly nestled in white fuzz. I dumped the contents on a paper plate. There, assuming the shape of the can from which they came, was a collection of sprouts, slightly mold-blown, but still viable.

One of the reasons I bought actual property was for the opportunity to grow things. I was raised by like-minded parents, and to me, “the miracle of the seed” is the closest link I have to any belief in a Higher Power. If you seek proof of a god, go plant some seeds. I crammed the sprouts in a small soil-filled earthen pot and again forgot them.

The dang things took. I was reminded the following New Year’s Day. We were throwing a party, and I made it an opportunity to show off my first homegrown batch of Florida tomatoes.

“What’s this?” a guest asked, pointing to the tiny potted plants.

“Oh, wow,” I answered. “Grapefruit, I think.”

“From seed? That never works.”

But there they were, two baby trees, side by side. I started keeping track of them then. Other than cabbage palms, these were the first trees I had ever grown from seed. My yard’s loaded with cabbage palms, by the way.

So my ugly grapefruit tree isn’t really a tree — it’s two trees. I never had the heart to separate them. I was advised to, just as I was advised to graft them to something called “sour orange” stock. They’re just too good together. The trunk of one fairly engulfs the trunk of the other, gnarling it somewhat and certainly not enhancing the appearance, but jeez, the two are one. No, I couldn’t separate them.

After twelve years, it pushed forth its first blooms. By now it was part of the yard, shielding my back porch from the searing western sun. We were surprised and didn’t believe it at first. We were told this “just wouldn’t happen.” But soon, we were the proud parents of a dozen baby grapefruits, all on only one of the two trees.

One by one, I watched each fruit shrivel and fall. By December that year, there was only one grapefruit left on the tree. It seemed firmly attached though, and of supermarket size. After a cold snap, I figured it was ripe for picking. I called my wife at work.

“Do you mind if I eat it for lunch?” Although the fridge was full of store-bought grapefruit, this one was special, and I wanted her permission.

“You grew it, you eat it.” Either she was being extremely generous, or extremely cautious. Funny, it was very similar to the reaction I get whenever I bring home wild game.

Anyway, I did eat that grapefruit. And, unexpectedly, it was pink. And juicy. And sweet. I ate it “Florida-style.” That is, I cut it into latitudinal slices — grapefruit “cookies,” as it were — snipped the rind, spread the flesh and gobbled the triangles off the bone. That’s the best way to eat the stuff in my opinion; fast and wasteless. Then I licked the plate. Boy, was it good.

From seeds that would sprout but never grow, a tree that was never to be, blooms that would never appear, came a fruit that was delicious. Yeah, only one; and no, it was not white, but against all odds nonetheless.

Last year the tree did not flower, but this spring it bloomed spectacularly. It is December as I write this, and I can truthfully say both trunks are loaded with fruit, some in my yard and some in my neighbor’s. Why is the fruit on my neighbor’s side so much bigger? Ah well, that’s the way it always is, isn’t it? We just had a cold snap and this morning I sampled a baseball-sized specimen from my side of the fence. The rind was bright yellow, the flesh frighteningly pink. Very juicy when I cut it, but alas, I shall not lie. Edible, but a mite bitter.

But there are many more green ones on the tree, and much larger ones, too. I’ll have to keep sampling. You know, I’ve never trimmed this thing. Never fertilized it either. Never even watered it, for that matter. Maybe a little TLC would put forth a tastier crop. We’ll see.

For now, it’s something for nothing.

I’m sure very few of us are sad to see the end of 2009. The bad certainly outweighed the good this year.

I usually rate my annual experience with two indicators: weddings and funerals. 2008 was a busy year, with two funerals and three weddings. 2007 was an even count: one wedding and one funeral. 2009? No weddings and no funerals — a blasé year if ever there was one.

I can’t say I enjoy funerals, but I certainly love weddings. I love everything about them. Getting dressed up, witnessing a milestone then throwing away your inhibitions by getting sloshing drunk and doing the Chicken Dance… It’s like a show, dinner, drinks and dancing — all on someone else’s tab! Now that’s a night out.

Funerals are similar, but certainly more somber. You get dressed up, witness a milestone, then go somewhere and cry in your beer. I’ve actually been to weddings that were less fun than funerals, and I’ve been to funerals where I knew more people than at weddings, but generally, funerals are pretty much a downer. It’s a nice contrast, weddings and funerals, like dill pickles and maple sugar. You need the sour to balance the sweet.

It reminds me of a game we played as kids called “Cows and Graveyards.” When traveling anywhere in upstate New York, one was very likely to encounter dairy farms. The deal was to pick one side of the car and count all the cows you saw. When you came to a graveyard, the slate was erased and you started over. At the end of the trip, the remainder of the cows was your score. Silly? Yes, and slightly stupid, but the trip went faster. Weddings and funerals do the same. With each one, I’m reminded of how fast life is flying by.

Well, 2009 didn’t fly by. Witness, once again: no weddings and no funerals. But man, a whole bunch of people sure did die this year. Some were a real surprise, but many were slow and inevitable. Farrah Fawcett and Pat Swayze come to mind on the slow scale. Michael Jackson in the surprise category. But there were others, no less important though certainly less glamorous, that we may have overlooked.

The first person I’d like to eulogize was not a person at all. It was our cat, Crystal, at age 16, of congestive heart failure. Crystal led a colorful career, in cat terms, and was at times both loved and reviled. A highly talented napper, she ran free and wild in our yard (between naps) and not a single lizard on my property had a complete tail in her 15 years of residence. Birds too were on her menu, and that attests to her hunting prowess. It is also believed she had many lovers, to a point where some referred to her (in veterinary terms) as a “loose pussy.” She had many nicknames, most of which are unprintable, though some are inscribed upon her grave marker, located by the back fence.

I’m sure very few of you remember Vic Mizzy. Well, you should. He wrote the two greatest TV theme songs ever: “Green Acres” and “The Addams Family.” I haven’t seen either show in decades but I can still belt out the themes note for note. As TV songwriters go, Mizzy was amazing. His combination of melodic hooks and clever, catchy lyrics has never been surpassed. Do they give awards for stuff like that? If they don’t, they ought to. He was 93 when he died this fall.

Does anybody out there remember a guy named Robert S. McNamara? Well, he died in July. When I think back to those dark days of Vietnam, for some reason that name evokes a slow nagging nausea. “McNamara’s War,” it was dubbed, and he spent a lot of time living it down, eventually inspiring a book and documentary called “The Fog Of War.” My generation hated the man, and now I can’t remember why. As far as I know, he didn’t start the war, he was chosen to manage it. Sometimes we heap too much on a man. Also 93, he died in his sleep.

Anybody remember Captain Lou Albano? His claim to fame was his wacko showmanship. In fact, I think he invented some of the very popular body-piercing fashions we’re being subjected to today. He was a pro-wrestler, a garish self-promoter and managed the career of one Cyndi Lauper. For those of you who don’t know, Cyndi Lauper was Madonna’s twin sister. Or, one did the voice-overs for the other… Or, one was the other one’s mother… Or something. Anyway, Captain Lou died in October. If you’re a fan of pro wrestling — and there are many of you — it’s probably because of Mr. Albano. He elevated professional wrestling from cult status to the mainstream.

Who has never heard of Les Paul? He invented two things of grave importance to anyone who enjoys popular music: the solid body electric guitar and multi-track recording. Actually, he can’t take sole credit for the electric guitar, nor can he take sole credit for the guitar he lent his name to, the Gibson Les Paul. But without that gizmo, rock n’ roll would have no teeth. Every guitarist at one time or another yearns for a Les Paul. Personally, I don’t like them. I find them too heavy. And you know what? I don’t really care for Mr. Paul’s recordings either; they’re tedious and overcomplicated, in my opinion. But without the Les Paul guitar, Led Zeppelin would not have had its Led, Peter Frampton would have never “come alive,” and Jethro Tull would have been just another artsy flute band. Les Paul died in August.

Speaking of August, was this the longest, hottest summer ever? Nothing makes a year drag more slowly than uncomfortable, monotonous weather. Usually, by October, we’ve had at least a whiff of relief. That “whiff” this past fall lasted about a day. It is November as I write this, and it’s still hot out. Gaggin’ hot… And it started early — we had 100-degree days in June. But the fishing was good. Long, hot summer/good fishing… Why am I complaining?

No one needs to be reminded how bad a business year it’s been. Is this a surprise? For over a year we’ve had the major media beating us over the head with how bad things are. Even if you had a good year, you wouldn’t want to admit it for fear you’d be shouted down like some kind of braggart or liar. There are glaring causes for this so-called recession — economic “bubbles,” the exportation of all our manufacturing, fast and loose credit — but our buddies giving us the news sure haven’t helped anything. It’s like they wanted this to happen for lack of any other news. If you call a dog “bad” long enough, it’ll be a bad dog. If you tell someone they’re ugly enough times, they’ll become ugly. No wonder nobody wants to spend any money. No wonder no one wants to hire. They don’t dare; things are too uncertain. Why? Because the media keeps telling us they are.

Sure, there are signs that things are not right. I’ve seen several of my customers fold. The 32-hour workweek has become the norm, locally. Some have had wage cuts. But it’s happened before. And the last time (the late ’70s-early ’80s) you actually had to appear, stand in line, and sign to pick up your benefits. Now it’s all done online. And in the old days, the bennies ran out after six months. Now, well, they haven’t run out yet. The Feds keep extending them. To paraphrase Will Rogers: we’re the first generation to go to the poorhouse in a Hummer with a laptop, an iPod, and a cell phone.

I certainly didn’t have a great year with my business. After 22 years though, I’m used to it. These things happen; economies rise and fall. I thank God I’m self-employed. I have no one to blame but myself. I always have work to do. I may not always get paid for my work, but at least I’ve got work. Work = Purpose. To have a purpose: that’s the best wages on the planet.

We certainly had our share of household disasters this year. Boy, can that put a drag on things. Two weeks without water in April… (You can read all about that in the summer issues of The Resident.) Did I mention the smoking dishwasher? Not steam, mind you, but smoke. I got to teach my son how to wash dishes the old-fashioned way. That’s like teaching a cat to swim. At the tune of a mere $100, we finally had it serviced. I was quite unbusy that day, and chatted with the repairman as he worked. I learned a couple of things. First, appliance repairmen charge by the hour. Second, that includes time spent chatting. Third, I’m in the wrong business.

Wet spots on the ceiling.. A smoking icemaker… Intermittent A/C in a very hot summer… A failed tomato crop… Okay, okay, let’s quit dwelling on the negative. Surely some good things happened this year. Like… Um… Uh… The fishing! Yeah! The fishing was good this year.

I picked up this addiction when we lived in Buffalo, New York. There was a fine Italian market on Hertel Avenue called Passanisi’s. Man, did they have olives. I started out “chipping” with the milder ones but soon went mainline. Salty, oil-cured Italians, kalamatas both green and red, those little Lebanese ones… I even eat them for breakfast. And I have a connection right here in Melbourne Beach.

I probably walk into the Melbourne Beach Supermarket once a day. Not always for olives (they have a cigar I like, too) but often enough to feel familiar with the personnel. My last olive-quest involved a conversation with a new face. Before she ladled my treats into a container she asked the rhetorical mother of all questions: “How are you today?”

Anyone who knows me knows I have several responses to that, and anyone who knows me knows never to ask that. But the girl was new, so I thought I’d just be honest. “Sweaty,” I said. It was hot, for sure.

“I wouldn’t know,” she said. “I’m under air all day. This is my first full year in Florida.”

“Well, don’t count on the calendar to tell if it’s hot,” I added. “It can be hot anytime.”

Then she asked the most ubiquitous question known to the beachside: “Where are you from?” And she qualified it with: “In Florida, it seems everybody’s from somewhere else.” So true…

Think about it. Just about all that Florida has become is from somewhere else. People aside, Florida has become a veritable settling basin for things from somewhere else. One need look no farther than their yard.

When I bought my property fifteen years ago, there were three trees: a queen sago, an areca palm, and a Canary Island date palm. They’re still here, and prized specimens, but they’ve been joined by other non-native species. Carrotwood, Brazilian pepper, grapefruit, bougainvillea, periwinkle… All are, or at one time were, part of my landscape.

Now let’s bump up the evolutionary ladder a tad and look at your bugs. If bugs are a blessing, Florida is sacred ground. I can’t think of any other place that so badly doesn’t need an imported boost in the bug population. But we got ‘em, none more onerous and prolific than the fire ant. Yep, they came from South America. Supposedly in a ship’s ballast.

And all those cute brown lizards scurrying along my fence? Cuban anoles. Their favorite food is each other — and our native anole. When’s the last time you saw a green one? They are rare. Anoles also eat bugs, though. I wonder if they eat fire ants. They’re probably too spicy for the Florida anole, but maybe the Cuban ones could handle them. Now that would be a blessing.

Every now and again we’ll hear a cackling racket in the sky and it’s a flock of thirty or more Amazonian parrots. Melbourne Beach has a resident population, bred from escaped pets. In some of the canals south of town you can find tilapia, Nile perch, peacock bass… The woods are full of armadillos and feral hogs. I could go on. Everything’s from somewhere else. And with the exception of fire ants and Brazilian pepper, I don’t mind a bit. I like to think we got the best of elsewhere.

But there are a few items from elsewhere I still wish we’d get. Thirty years ago, when my wife and I first made contact with the Sunshine State, our wish list would have been headed by two things: New York pizza and  Buffalo chicken wings. In 1979, we could find acceptable versions of neither. Locally, both have come a long way though, and that’s an admission from a former Buffalonian. Buffalo’s the place where pizza and wings are eaten by every family at least once or twice a week. Florida’s versions have improved so much that we have re-established that tradition.

While we’re on the subject of food, I have yet to find a Florida-grown tomato to rival the ones my mother grew. I’ve grown an annual crop for 14 years. I’ve tried several varieties and methods. I still can’t get that thin-skinned, right-off-the-vine, drooling, dripping sweetness my mom could conjure in a climate that might see snow in August. Regardless of their inferiority though, it is hard to find a fresh-picked tomato in New York in January, which is when mine peak. Yeah, my skins may be thicker and the fruit a little less juicy, but you won’t find anything near as good in a northern winter supermarket.

Something else I wish we could get here is smallmouth bass. Yes, I do enjoy tearing up the Stick Marsh with Florida-strain bigmouths — and I’ve boated my share- — but there’s something about that smallmouth “bite.” The nearest sensation I have found involves our local bluefish. They, like the smallmouth, have a tendency to just be “there” when they strike. No tap, no jiggle, just bam. No need to set the hook, they’ve done it for you. And pound for pound, smallmouths put our local bigmouths to shame in a fight. They put bigmouths to shame on the table, too. Taken from cold, clear northern waters, the smallmouth’s flesh is white and firm; some of the best freshwater eating there is.

Besides olives, I have another addiction. Water. Okay, okay, you can start with the jokes like “Honest, Doc, at first it was just a glass or two with lunch and the next thing you know I’m swimming in it!”… Yeah, everyone’s addicted to water, but it’s not the H2O per se, it’s the proximity to it. For some reason I’m not happy unless I’m living somewhere near water. It can be salt or fresh, black or clear, still or rushing, but I crave it. Florida satisfies, but there is one aspect missing: waterfalls.

Let’s face it, Florida lacks terrain. For waterfalls you need terrain. A chasm. A cliff. Mountains. Something other than a sinkhole… I suppose you could say the surf could substitute for a waterfall.  There is some resemblance, and living by the sea far outweighs the joy I get from waterfalls. But I do miss ‘em. Does anyone know where the nearest waterfall is? Maybe we should import one. I’m sure Disney’s already done it. But that doesn’t count. I want to know where the nearest natural waterfall is. And it’s gotta be at least five feet.

Of course it’s the things that Florida makes for herself that really keeps us here. A swimmable ocean. The drama of our skies. The intensity of our sun. The sweet flesh of mangrove snapper and stone crab. Our unending beach. The ability to eat Thanksgiving dinner in the pool…

Naked…