Being prepared

I was looking at the Lake this morning and thinking about putting the kayaks in the water while Daughter Two is home for the holidays. Accordingly, I put together this “must take” list. Did I mention I like lists?

Anyhoo, herewith my list of items the well-prepared kayaker takes along for outings with the daughter during the winter months:

1.       Primary paddle

2.       Standby paddle

3.       PFD (life jacket to you  lubbers)

4.       Hand pump

5.       Sponge

6.       Paddle float

7.       Pogies

8.       Paddle gloves

9.       Paddle jacket

10.   Wet suit

11.   Whistle

12.   Waterproof flares

13.   Line throw bag

14.   Booties

15.   Extra wool socks

16.   Extra wicking shirts

17.   Knit cap

18.   Sunglasses

19.   Floppy hat

20.   Water bottles

21.   Snacks in dry bag

22.   Lunch in dry bag

23.   Camera in dry bag

24.   Headlamp

25.   Beach towel

26.   Extra dry bag for keys and wallet

(NOTE: When you start making lists of stuff for which you’ve long since ceased to need lists, it’s possible there’s another reason. Like, say….CAN’T WAIT FOR DAUGHTER TWO TO COME HOME!)

David and Dominic

Not all of my teachers have had fancy degrees. David and Dominic were two of the greatest teachers I’ve ever met. They weren’t really teachers in any formal sense but they sure taught me.

I was managing a small plant making plastic bottles and filling them with glue. When the bottles came out of the molding machine, random lots of 100 or so would be set aside for close inspection. The sample bottles had extra plastic called tabs that had to be removed manually, then the bottles would be candled. That is, they’d be held up to a light to search for pinholes. The last thing you wanted in a bottle that would be filled with glue was a pinhole. We called this whole process “de-tabbing.”

We had trouble keeping employees de-tabbing because it was boring, thankless, repetitive work. Everyone thought the work was beneath them, that is, everyone but David and Dominic. David and Dominic had intellectual disabilities and they thought a job that allowed them to sit and shoot the bull inside out of the weather was just fine.  They’d set their chairs and bins and lamps up just inside the roll-up door and they’d talk and laugh and greet everyone arriving for work and watch the trucks unload and meanwhile, their hands never stopped moving.

One day as I walked by on my way to the warehouse, Dominic ducked my gaze while David beckoned me over with his face screwed up in a show of great urgency. I had a meeting to get to and I knew from experience that any time David wanted to have a little fun at my expense, I was going to burn at least five minutes or so. And anytime Dominic wouldn’t meet my gaze, I just knew I was in for it. These two were inveterate practical jokers. Still…

“Yeah, David, what can I do for you?”

David pulled out a bottle, tore off the excess plastic and eyeballed it over the candling lamp and tossed it into the ‘accept’ bin. Then, he looked up at me with the expression that I knew meant he thought he was about to ask me a trick question, trick questions being sort of a staple of David’s sense of humor.

“Why are we doing this?”

Trying to keep my exasperation from showing, I started to explain for about the nth time that when the machine formed the bottles, some extra plastic was caught and squeezed between the mold cavity and the blow pin…

“No, Mr. Mike!” he cried out his frustration. “Why do we do this?” and he popped the tab off another bottle as Dominic, hands still and head cocked, strained to catch every word. I thought I detected a giggle but I let it pass.

I counted to ten slowly before starting again. I’d been told that David had the mental capacity of a five-year-old so I tried to find a simpler way of explaining that would allow me to go on my way and get some work done. “You see, David, the hot plastic comes out in a tube and the clamp closes the mold around it, and…”

“Mr. Mike! I KNOW all that!” David gave me a look that left no doubt as to which of us he thought was the dumb guy. “What I mean is, why do we do this…” he tore off yet another tab…”when we could just do this?”  And with that, David grabbed a handful of bottles and flung them full force onto the floor, scattering them from the loading dock to the first high stack of finished goods. People on the other side of the production floor stopped their work to see how I would respond.

I was wondering whatever possessed him to make such a mess but David just smirked at me and pointed to the floor while Dominic collapsed in giggles behind him. Looking where David pointed, this time I saw more than the mess. Scattered around me were bottles and tabs but no bottle-and-tabs. Every tab had been wrenched lose by the impact. When I looked up again, David and Dominic were both laughing and so was I.

By the time the crew reported the next morning, we’d jury-rigged an air cannon and a metal screen and were blasting the tabs from hundreds of bottles at a time. We still had David and Dominic candle our sample lots but the dreariest and most time-consuming job in the plant was now accomplished by these same two guys using an air cannon in their free time between sample candling lots.

David received a big bonus for his idea that year. And I received a bonus, too. I learned something about listening to the idea before judging the person and that not all smart ideas come from people we think of as smart. I learned that I didn’t have a corner on the smarts market and mostly, I learned that a person who thinks outside the box can never really be put in one.

Altar boys

I was just reading an online article regarding the controversy currently raging over the refusal of some diocese of the Roman Catholic Church to allow females to act as altar servers. It seems that some priests and bishops have decided that altar service should be limited to males.

The Catholic Church has a long history of treating women as second-class citizens. I don’t agree with the attitude of the church toward women but then, I also don’t understand why any girl would want to be an altar server. Or any boy, for that matter, but that’s not where I’m going.

I was an altar boy back in the days of solemn high Latin masses. I can still rattle off a mean Suscipiat at lightning speed. I remember all the choreographed dance steps as though I’d last performed them yesterday.  

I went through my initial training under Father LaVelle, staying late afternoons after school to learn the Latin and the moves and the order of things. I picked it all up quickly and was soon awarded a special wooden cross to wear around my neck on a string. It was supposed to be an honor of sorts for those of us who were on the altar boy fast track.

I found myself assigned to Father Holland’s Sunday crew, on the 7:00am and 12:15 pm mass shifts, and on call for special masses. I altar-boyed for a lot of weddings and funerals.  Some assignments were better than others. We used to vie to work funerals with Fr. Holland, because he would always take us out for burgers and fries afterward.  After a Mass of the Angels, he’d take us for a swim at the neighborhood pool. He didn’t want our young psyches damaged through exposure to such sad events as the funeral of a child. He was a good guy with a huge heart and of course, we played him shamelessly. Looking off into space after a particularly sad funeral was usually good for onion rings.

When we worked weddings, we would make bets on the probability that one of the wedding party would faint during the service. There was usually a box of Jujy Fruits hanging in the balance. With stakes like that, arguments in the changing room behind the sacristy would rage. Nodders didn’t count, but what about leaners? If the first usher caught the best man, who then came around before going completely comatose, did that count?

A kid who went down in the pews was out of bounds. Stumblers didn’t count, although a really good one would make us bite our collective lips. As fun a guy as Fr. Holland was, even he frowned on laughing at stumblers.  And a dancer was highly entertaining but scored no points unless the noggin hit the carpet.

The bride and her women in waiting didn’t count. Which is not to say they never went down. But women were considered more likely to swoon, and therefore too obvious to bet on.  Only males earned points. The irony is that although women were exempted due to their assumed frailty, I can tell you from long experience that more groomsmen end up kissing the kneeler than bridesmaids. We should have doubled up bets on the fair flowers hitting the floor.

We weren’t totally heartless in our calculations. A fainter who also upchucked earned our sympathy and therefore, was outside our calculations. And bets were off for any service involving the use of incense, long regarded as the bane of potential passer outers.

Betting on syncope was not our only entertainment. One priest who frequently worked our room had two peculiarities that played right into our hands. Fr. X had a thing about always consecrating all the wine we brought him. This meant he had to drink it, this being before the days of pass-the-chalice. This particular cleric also had trouble holding his vino. So naturally, when the prep boy saw the poor chump’s name on the schedule, he would make sure to set out the largest wine cruets, filled to the  spout with the novitiate’s finest.

This poor guy would bravely drink down all the wine, and within a few minutes, would be struggling visibly and painfully to avoid burping into the microphone. And after mass, he would politely but firmly remind us to use the small wine cruets and next mass, we’d super-size him again. Great fun!

You know, come to think of it, we really were little monsters. Mothers, don’t let your sons – or daughters - grow up to be altar servers. It’s a bad crowd.

It’s list time again!

My thanks-giving list:

1.       None of my family were in the accident I saw tonight.

2.       The folks who were involved had a dozen responders on the scene within about four minutes, with all sorts of equipment.

3.       Daughter Two has a good friend with whom to spend the holiday.

4.       We were born in a place / time in which we’re able to live lives free from want. And when we can talk to Daughter Two in real time when she can’t come home for the holiday.

5.       Mary

6.       Family

7.       Old friends

8.       My turkey roaster

9.       The book I’m reading (Blind Your Ponies by Stanley Gordon West)

10.   The dogs, except sometimes.

11.   Writing

And a really special one: Mary and I are so fortunate that our daughters have had opportunities and have capitalized on those opportunities to establish their lives in wonderful directions, that they’re both smart and courageous enough to make course corrections when needed, and that they have each other.

Dear readers, I hope this finds each of you with uncountable reasons to be thankful.

Dogs

Today was a dog day. First thing this morning, the canines who allow us to share their house were upstairs urging us to come down stairs and feed them. Of course Odin The Horse paused at the door to Daughter Two’s bedroom, staring at her bed in the false hope that she would be where she belonged  at last. Failing to find her there, he came into our room looking for his morning pat on the head.

Mary and I really enjoy when Odin comes to my side of the bed because once I’ve scratched his ears, he has to back out, being too long to make a U turn between the bed and the set of shelves. This morning, he was further confused when I made those boop-boop sounds that trucks make when backing up.  

Of course, Zooey The Small And Annoying had already interrupted Mary’s sleep earlier to demand a trip to the backyard for her morning peering session. She goes out on the back stoop and peers at the backyard, as though she’s legitimately on watch for prowlers and such. Of course, she’s a major wuss, so the peering impresses no one. Not even the rabbits and squirrels.

Both the dogs eventually ended up outside at the same time. They wore themselves out with playing hard in the frost-cold yard most of the day so that now, they’re both zonked on their dog beds, where they will remain more or less inert until we go to bed, signaling time for them to need our attention once again.

We had dinner at the neighbors’ and their dog Ynez needed her share of loving. She is a Golden Retriever and had just been shampooed, so her coat was absolutely silky. It was great.

I went to the store for milk this evening. This woman with a service dog just barely missed the bus so I drove them home. The dog rested its head on my knee while I drove. It was a sweetheart and I’d like to think it was thankful to me for not making it and the woman wait in the cold for the next bus.

Lots of my good days involve dogs.

Indifferent beauty

The Fall colors are out in their riotous glory!

They don’t know. They don’t care.  They just are.

It would be easy to personify the trees and impute some intent on their part. I know that’s ridiculous. Trees only think in Oz and Hogwarts. But I can wish it weren’t so.

I could believe that the trees are crying out against the impending loss of their foliage, their incipient nakedness. Or perhaps giving the world the arboreal version of the finger – see what I can do when I try? Take that!

The truth is more pedestrian, I suppose. The trees aren’t doing this of their own volition.

They don’t know. They don’t care. The colors just come.

And I get to watch!

Extended family

I’m looking at pictures hung on the wall of our family room and one in particular has awakened my imagination. It’s one of those posed shots of everyone who happened to attend this particular family gathering - my cousin Sue’s wedding. We’re standing in careful ranks so that all the smiling faces are exposed to the camera.

I know all these people. I played with some of them as a kid and some of them played with my daughters when they were kids. The common thread runs through one person. Everyone in the photo is descended from my grandmother.

She was quite a presence in my young life. All of the cousins in my rung of the family have strong memories of pot lucks out on her patio, breakfast in the little yellow room off the kitchen, sleeping in the room off the porch, giggling at private jokes while the adults played cards in the dining room.

Many of my childhood memories revolve around the relationships represented in this one photo. And a foot away from it is a similar photo of Mary’s extended family, spreading across the lawn to left and right of their family matriarch. I suppose most families have a photo like this.

Some don’t, of course.

I won’t go back into the whole nature vs. nurture argument. But it does seem to me that a great deal of who I am now can be divined from studying this photo. As is true of Mary and the folks in her family team photo.

I feel a great deal of sympathy for folks who don’t have one of these photos on their family room wall. Growing up in a family that chooses to continue to come together over the years to mark the way posts of our collective lives must have something to do with the sense of belonging and self-worth that got me through down times.

Every child deserves to grow up in a family like this. Which is not to say that small families and single-child homes can’t produce wonderful human beings. Or that all large families produce only Nobel Prize winners.  But I’m thankful for the family in which I grew up – brother and sisters, my parents, uncles and aunts and of course, Grandma K.

Mary Fitzgerald Kersting was not a scientist or a politician or an entertainer. Few people outside our family would likely recall her today. But for me, my grandmother and the other folks descended from her formed the framework of my life.

She is long gone but certainly not forgotten. Not by me and not by anyone in that picture.

More about Fall

It’s blowing and raining today. Truly nasty. But yesterday was one of those days when nothing at all is moving.

Sometimes a cliché is the perfect descriptor: riding across the lake was like skating across a 22 mile long, three mile wide mirror. I could see two volcanos, one upright and the other upside down, two islands, two of each tree and house and dock along the shoreline.

There was one boat on the lake and it had been in the same place for some time, because there wasn’t so much as a ripple on the lake.  I could have spent an hour on the bridge, just taking in the view.

I wish a really good artist had been on hand to paint the scene. It helped me get to sleep last night.

Boot camp

I’m sitting on the concourse at Lindbergh Field in San Diego. Right across the field, clearly visible from where I sit is the Marine Corps Recruit Depot. Driving here from the hotel, we went right past the site of the old Naval Recruit Training Center, where I took Navy boot camp. It was adjacent to MCRD, and while it’s mostly gone now, there are reminders still to be had.

TDE-1, the U.S.S. Recruit, still sails the concrete sea where we trained for shipboard emergencies. And we drove right past the bridge where it’s alleged that a certain recruit company threw the bridge guard over the rail into the estuary the day we crossed over from “Worm Island.”

Speaking of Worm Island, the barracks I lived in for the first three weeks was right there, no more than a hundred yards from the road we were driving on. The windows are all knocked out. I’m told it’s used now as a training facility for local firefighters. Frankly, I’m surprised it’s still standing at all.

Through the open (missing, actually) window, I could see right where my bunk stood. And the concrete tables where we scrubbed our grundies was in plain sight.

Memory is indeed selective. I couldn’t tell you with any certainty the layout of half of the places I lived while I was a bachelor. I have to really concentrate to bring forth my mental floor plan of the first house Mary and I owned.

Boot camp was different. If not for the damage wrought by practicing firefighters, I could walk blind-folded through that barracks and give you a guided tour. Part of it is the “first home away” effect I suppose. But more than that, it seems that the boot camp experience has a particular hold on my memories. I have to say, the memories are not entirely negative.

I wasn’t fond of the incessant marching and I could have lived without the obstacle course, where I dropped my lunch one afternoon in front of my seventy-man company. But I did enjoy the experience overall.

A large group of guys from all regions and walks of life came together and worked in close concert. For nine weeks, our fortunes rose and fell as a group. Even as a family of sorts. After those nine weeks, I remained friends with a few but even with them, I gradually lost contact over time. Still, I’ll never forget them.

I wouldn’t go back through boot camp for a million dollars. But neither, for the same amount, would I be willing to give up the memory.

Mixed tape

It was common in the days when tape players ruled the musical world to make a gift of what we used to call a “mixed tape”. I was never a big fan of them as a young man, since I had my own musical tastes which were sufficiently eclectic as to make it nigh onto impossible for even a good friend to make a mixed tape from their own music to which I’d enjoy listening.

Or so, I thought.

I’ve listened to several mixed tapes of late. One was put together by my brother years ago and was heavy on Credence Clearwater, Jackson Browne and other artists he used to love, with some Warren Zevon thrown in to provide the recommended daily allowance of headless Thompson gunners.  One that I can’t find and wish I could was by Vala Cupp, my then-girlfriend. Cab Calloway, Billie Holliday, Tom Waits and Manhattan Transfer – now, there was a mix! Vala died a few years back and I really wish I’d kept this momento.

My friend Lance Hamilton used to come up with really cool mixes and I wish I had some of them now. The ones he made during the Electric Light Orchestra years would be fun to have. And I REALLY wish I still had the one a friend of mine made that included the only known recording of me singing bass in the quartet for Music Man.

As I write this, I’m on a flight from Seattle to San Diego and the folks seated behind me are holding forth non-stop at full volume about topics only a computer wonk would care about. In self-defense, I pulled out the old iPod and - tired of both Beethoven and the Oak Ridge Boys - I went surfing and came across a mixed set labeled “Swerdloves.” It turns out to be just what I needed. It’s truly a “mixed” playlist, with new twists on old favorites interspersed with cuts I’d never have chosen for myself but that feel like home within the first 32 bars. The Il Divo cut is to die for. What’s really cool is that I haven’t listened to this set for a while, so it feels new.

I guess there’s probably not likely to be a resurgence of mixed tape gifting on the near horizon. Too bad. Listening to music chosen for you by a dear friend you don’t see often is one of the treats of life. It’s a bit like enjoying Thanksgiving dinner at someone else’s house. The meal’s not prepared precisely the way you’ve always done it at home, but while it will never supplant your own traditions, it’s nevertheless homey and familiar. And sometimes a little surprising.

Thanks, Swerdlove people! I can’t imagine why I never much liked mixed tapes thirty years ago. What was I thinking?