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A couple hours to myself on a Sunday, so I head to the nearest library.
Why?
Because it’s AIR CONDITIONED!
It’s 90-degrees out there, and it’s really humid. No, I will not suck it up. It is my choice to find a cool place. I’d be at the beach, but with Hurricane Bill raising a stink off the coast of Maine, the lifeguards are keeping people out of the water. I’ll wait until after the sun goes down before I head to the beach.
I had a bachelor flashback this morning.
It didn’t hit me all at once. I waited until the fog had lifted from my brain. I did not want to be awake. It was bad enough that I had to be up at 5am, bad enough that the forecast called for hazy, humid with a chance of showers AGAIN. I stepped out of the shower, toweled off and took five steps to the bed, where my clothes were laid out. Then it hit me.
That Cosmic Dope Slap that makes you say, “Whoa”.
Understand this, my Hole In The Ground (a.k.a. my apartment) is a studio in the basement of my building. I can stand in the doorway to the kitchen and see everything in my apartment. I stopped and looked around. I looked at a couple days worth of dishes piled in the sink, and at the books stacked at bedside. I looked at the clean laundry neatly folded in the basket and the dirty laundry in an overflowing hamper, and I came to the conclusion it was like being 24 again. It was the last time I lived alone. Which means that I have regressed 24 years.
But I have better furniture this time around. I have a queen-sized bed, lots of bookcases for my always-growing collection of books, a couch, a farmers table and chairs in the kitchen, a couple chests of drawers, and a rocker that I have been meaning to throw out. I really couldn’t throw it out. Afterall, where would I put my clothes. Everybody has a clothes magnet, a place where you toss your clothes while undressing for bed. Mine is the rocker.
Lately my desire to cook has severly diminished. I’m doing well if I can put a stir-fry together. Last night for dinner I had beans, hot dogs and a home-brewed beer. That’s what I call fine dining.
It’s been hellish in My Hole in The Wall. It’s because of the humidity. I just can’t get comfortable. While watching Jeopardy, I was one thin layer of cotton away from wearing my birthday suit. That’s one of the benefits of living alone. You can take comfortable to another level. But I would much rather have it cold than hot. For me, hot is uncomfortable and you can only take off so many pieces of clothing. If you’re cold, you can always add a layer. I personally believe in heat conservation. Share it with someone and you both benefit.
Now that I’m a bachelor redux, what’s different and why can’t I replicate it? Let’s go back 24 years. I lived alone. I shopped, cooked and cleaned for one. I had books and TV. I went to the movies, spent time with friends, and worked. I did everything then that I’m doing now.
So, why is it more difficult this time around? Because, gentle reader, I have eaten the Fruit of Knowledge. The difference being I have life experience. I know the pain of starting over. I know how challenging myself with this new life is sometimes difficult. Moving forward has obsticles. The trick is to recognize things for what they are and deal. But there are also opportunities for me. I can do anything, go anywhere, be what I want. It’s frustrating because I WANT IT ALL NOW!!
It’s not like that. Take it slow.
It’s a recurring theme in this blog, but I get impatient sometimes. I am challenged financially. That will change over time, but I want it to be NOW. This is why I love writing these posts. I can clear out the junk and figure stuff out in writing.
Every so often, I’d like to comment on the music that’s important in my life, and the memories associated with it. I continue to be astounded by the power of music. I heard several piano pieces by Franz Liszt one Sunday at church. I sat there in the pew and let the music wash over me, it was so beautiful. Anytime I can sing choral works by Mozart, I feel transformed, the music is so simple and yet so beautiful. George Winston recorded a tribute album to jazz pianist Vince Guiraldi, which includes a cross-section of the music composed for the Peanuts TV specials. But the two pieces that bring me to tears are the last two cuts on the CD, Remembrance and Theme to Grace/Lament. I remember listening to that CD when my grandmother died in 1997.
My grandmother was the most important person to me, other than my parents and siblings. My mother’s mother, she was the secretary to the town manager in a small town in Connecticut. She would always call me by my first name, not my nickname. I recall her only raising her voice to me only once, probably out of exasperation over my inability to mind her, which wasn’t often. I remember climbing the tree in the front yard to her home, looking out for her Chevy Nova coming up the highway. Our family would spend part of the summer with my grandparents. My grandfather worked for Ma Bell, and he introduced me to the game of golf. A gift, I regret, I never thanked him for, but I always remember him whenever I take a club in hand.
My grandmother gave me many gifts. First, she instilled in me a love of reading. I have a photo of her, sitting in a folding lawn chair, reading to me while I sat in her lap. I loved hearing her read the Tales of Uncle Wiggley, the rabbit gentleman and his many adventures with his animal friends. The second gift from my grandmother was the gift of music. She didn’t sing, or if she did, it was a thin, wavering soprano. She didn’t play an instrument. She did have a phonograph and a wonderful console radio in the living room. I have memories of waking up to the smell of freshed brewed coffee, sizzling bacon and the radio. One Christmas I received a Panasonic table radio. It was AM only, but it was my guide to places I had only seen on a map. For awhile, I lived in central Maine. For me it seemed to be as far away from anything as one could get. I used to lie in bed with my earpiece plugged in, and I would slowly tune the dial and pick up stations in Boston, New York City, Chicago, Fort Wayne, St. Louis and Hartford, CT, where I was born, not far from my grandparents home. I would get so excited whenever I found WTIC, because that was the station my grandmother would listen to, while cooking breakfast on those warm summer mornings. Somehow I felt that, by listening to that station, I was able to be closer to my grandmother.
My grandmother also aided and abetted my youthful corruption. In the summer of 1970, my cousin Steve introduced me to The Beatles. I was nine years old and unaware that this influencial group had recently broken up. But I was so excited by this music. I had no idea what rock and roll music was. I knew that I enjoyed borrowing my grandfather’s Zenith transistor radio and taking into the backyard. I would lie in the hammock under a white pine and listen to music and to the Red Sox games. Didn’t everyone listen to Ken Coleman, Johnny Pesky and Ned Martin on warm summer days? But most often I would search for a good station with pop music.
One day, when my cousins were visting my grandmother’s house, they brought along “Let It Be”, the next-to-last album The Beatles recorded, but the last they released. I was hooked. What amazed me was, looking back, that my grandmother didn’t get upset and ask us to turn down the music. We didn’t have it up loud to begin with, but the idea that someone, an adult, was willing to tolerate our music was new. Later in my misspent youth, my mother would show us the same respect for our music, while my father would constantly be yelling at us to turn it down. Of course, my mother also impounded my copy of “Venus and Mars”, which she later regretted. I had to sneak tthe album out of its hiding place, play it in my room, and sneak back to replace it.
The details now begin to fade, but I do remember my grandmother buying “Let It Be”for me. She went to Caldor and bought it for $3.95. She would over time, later buy for me ”Abbey Road” and Paul McCartney’s second solo album, “Ram”. She also gave my the console when we moved to Massachusetts. It, unfortunatley, had outlived its usefulness. The radio had spotty reception and the needle was worn, and I didn’t have the desire to tinker with it. I never used it again.
She died of Alzheimer’s Disease in November 1997. She was beginning to show early stages when she attended my wedding in 1987. A little forgetful to start, but over time she began to deteriorate. I remember the last time I saw her. It was the summer of ‘97. She had been placed in a nursing home after my grandfather was unable to take care of her. The Alzheimer’s had progressed to a point where she needed 24/7 attention. My wife and I had driven down from Maine, to visit her in Massachusetts. My mother had briefed me before the trip. She told me that my grandmother wouldn’t recognize me, that she couldn’t communicate with me. When I walked into her room, she was resting on her bed having returned from lunch. I sat next to her and reached out for her hand. As I gently held it, her eyes opened and she looked at me. I don’t care what doctors and scientists say. I don’t care what research has shown. All I know is when she opened her eyes and looked at me, there was a twinkle in her eye. As she looked at me, I knew she was aware that I was there. I believe this with all my heart. Then she squeezed my hand. She couldn’t talk to me. She didn’t have to.
I miss her so much.
We all come to different forms of music in different ways. We are influenced by classmates, girl or boy friends, even teachers. My fifth grade teacher encouraged us to bring our albums and 45s to class, and he’d play them before the final rang. He also exposed us to some of his tastes. Where were you when you first heard Iron Butterfly’s “In-a gadda-da-vida”? Thank you, Mr. Tripp.
Looking back, I realize that this special woman gave me a gift that has stayed with me all my life. Music has carried me from youth to teen to adult. It has carried me across the Atlantic Ocean ( 1979, Gerry Rafferty “Baker Street”, heard it in a German youth club while fumbling my way through a conversation with a cute brunette, who couldn’t speak good English). It carried me into matrimony (1987, Anita Baker “Sweet Love”, the first dance with my wife) and into divorce (2008, Keene ”Everybody’s Changing”). I remember summer camp dances (1976, Rolling Stones “Wild Horses”, caught redhanded dancing with a girl I wasn’t supposed to) and high school prom (1979, Eric Clapton “Let It Grow”, feeling that it was a good as it would get..silly me). And, of course, The Woman Who Broke My Heart (2008, James Taylor “How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)” , I would sing it to her. I still smile when I hear it).
I will occasionally revisit some of these musical memories. Just short blubs, nothing too detailed. And only when my memory gets jogged. Just enough to make me say, “Wow”.
I love playing golf. More than that, I love playing golf well, which doesn’t happen often enough. Last night, the planets were aligned and the stars predicted great things, because I shot a 43.
Yeah, what’s the big deal?
If I played more often, that would be a regular score, maybe lower. But since I only play once a week, that’s pretty good. You also need to consider that usually I shoot about 7 strokes higher.
Wednesday nights are my league night. It’s just a bunch of regular guys, playing on a challenging, but not well-kept, golf course. One of the guys in the storeroom recruited me to play four years ago. I took last summer off, but I wanted to play this year to help me get back in touch with the game. I had made it a priority a long time ago, put in on the backburner for the kids. I hardly played at all.
Now that my son wants to play the game, I’ve been spending more time playing. It’s nice to see him interested in the game. We get to spend some good time together, getting a little exercise and riding that emotional roller coaster that is golf.
By the way, did I mention this was my lowest score in 2 years, and lowest ever in league play?
I have remained silent about the Red Sox this season, partly because I like to watch but don’t have cable. I’ll check the box scores in the paper, maybe read a little online. How about radio, you ask? As much as I enjoy listening to a ballgame on radio, it’s not at the front of my mind. But mostly I haven’t felt compelled to pay attention. I miss watching the games. I can’t go to Fenway Park because the scalpers and brokers have priced me and the kids out of a chance to go to a ballgame, and that pisses me off to no end.
You might say that I am a casualty of the 21st century. Raised on radio, seduced by TV, abandoned by cable.
Another reason why I have held back judgement on Ye Olde Towne Team is because of hope. Every Red Sox fan has hope. Since 2004, hope has been redefined. You might call it BWS and AWS..Before World Series and After World Series. With BWS, through the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s and early part of this century, Red Sox fans wore their disappointment like a badge of honor. We lived and died with our team. We loved them when they were winning, but hoping the failures weren’t too devistating. Our heroes both deserved praise and incurred our wrath. I could cite numerous examples, but we’d be here all day.
Ever since the Sox won the ‘04 and ‘07 World Series’, Red Sox Nation has taken on a different hue. Firstly, Red Sox Nation is a marketing ploy. You can be a card-carrying member of Red Sox Nation, but you have to pay for the privilege. And, no, not with blood,sweat and tears, and year in and out of watching good and great teams get so close, but not close enough. No, membership is hard cash. But this incarnation of Red Sox Nation is sorely lacking. The newbies didn’t earn their stripes. The Impossible Dream is only to be read about online. They didn’t endure the Collapse of ‘78 and Bucky Freakin’ Dent. They didn’t have their hopes raised high to heaven by Carlton Fisk in Game 6 in The Greastest World Series Game Ever, only to have those hopes dashed in Game 7. Maybe they remember Bill Buckner and Calvin Scharaldi in ‘86. Maybe they remember staying up to watch a few innings before shuffling off to bed. Buckner has been pardoned. We made sure of that after ‘04. But Scharaldi hasn’t even stood trial for crimes against humanity in Game 6 of that series. And Bob Stanley has gotten off light, even though HE gave up the hit to Mookie Wilson.
Sorry, I got sidetracked. We were talking about hope.
We all had hope at the beginning of the season. That’s one thing that’s great about baseball. There IS always next year. The start of a new season brings new hope. I felt that way about this season. This year it seemed that all the pieces came together. Good pitching, good hitting, solid bench and the bullpen was lights out. But, like everything in baseball, nothing is guaranteed.
The injuries to, among others, Tim Wakefield and Mike Lowell, have been ill timed. But, there really is no good time for an injury. At the moment, we can’t seem to hit our way out of a paper sack. New faces have been taking the place of old reliables and the chemistry has been disrupted, temorarily.
Two issues that are gnawing at me currently. They are the combined ineptitude of John Smoltz and Brad Penny. I’m not going to dig deep for stats. I don’t watch the game for stats. I do have an expectation that the standards of excellence be met, and those two need to be shown the door. Neither seem to be able to pitch past the 5th inning. Neither of them have commanding stuff, so hitters are just sitting back and waiting, and the results have been awful. Every member of Red Sox Nation wants to ask Sox GM Theo Epstein, “Why?” Why did you sign them? Was our pitching in that bad shape to sign those weary arms? Granted, Smoltz is coming off arm surgery, but now we know why the Braves didn’t think twice about not signing him. He’s got over 20 seasons under his belt. Did the Red Sox think that he’d go Roy Hobbs, complete with a gaping bullet wound, carry the team on his back into the playoffs? He may know HOW to throw the pitch, but he can’t pitch the way he did in the 90’s. Go quietly now and we’ll see you in Cooperstown in 2014.
Penny….okay, ‘06 Marlins won the World Series. But he’s no Josh Beckett. Sorry, you just don’t have it anymore.
SO…….where does that leave the Sox? Justin Masterson has been banished to the Indians. Daniel Bard pitches long relief, Michael Bowden and Clay Bucholtz deserve to be in Boston, but those two pantloads Penny and Smoltz are holding them back. Bring the new guys in. They have paid their dues. They have the stuff.
Baseball is a wonderful thing. Some don’t get it. The Woman Who Broke My Heart thought it was too slow. But it’s a game that slowly evolves over the course of nine innings. It demands your attention during those slow moments between pitches. If you always watch the ball, you miss bits and pieces of the action. I constantly have my head moving when the ball is in play. I don’t want to miss anything. I drink it all in like cool water.
But you have to wonder about the latest generation of Red Sox fans. They are a different breed. They are brought up on mechandising. Gotta have the Red Sox replica shirts. The girls have to wear the pink caps. It’s posing. For many of them, it’s like going to a frat party. It’s the hottest ticket in town and they got in. Do they really care about the game? Or are they more concerned with the good seats and better beer? Have Red Sox fans become like Yankee fams?
No, this generation of Sox fans, singing “Sweet Caroline” in the late innings, and believing that we’re entitled to win every World Series, are almost as bad as Yankee fans. Save the “Yankees Suck” hubris for after the game, after you’ve pounded down a river of Sam Adams. Ask them about the Spaceman and they’ll ask if its a PS3 game. They’re the ones who wear their replica Sox jerseys with 24 on the back, swearing that the best player to wear that number was Manny. Hello? Remember Dwight Evans? Not even Ricky Henderson would run on that arm.
That sense of entitlement can lead the most sane individual down a most precarious path. Your enthusiasm can be interpreted as arrogant, obnoxious, and off-putting. Start talking smack like that and you can only get into trouble.
As much as I think this season can be saved, I also believe we are walkinga thin line. The line between glory and heartbreak. Does the new breed of Sox fans have the stuff to weather this? Will Big Papi lose face and respect? Will Dice-K pull it all together, listen to the coaches, and be the brilliant star most fans want him to be?
We’ll just have to wait and see.
Yes, gentle reader, the muses have taken a break and they’ve taken me with them.
Not much going on at this end of the world, other than the knock-down, dragged-out shouting match the ex- and I have been having via email. This is more fighting than we did when we were married.
Sorry, I’ll save that for a time when the juices are really flowing. Stay tuned.
Let’s see….ah, yes. The Bear came home from Texas. Yes, a new face to grace this blog. The Bear and I go back to our college days in the Great White North, when we were both radio geeks. He moved to Texas back in ‘88, taking a job with a theatrical supply company in Dallas, and now considers the Lone Star State as home. He’s been home a few times over the years. This time, it was to introduce his partner to the Coast o’ Maine.
Usually, when The Bear comes home, he draws alot of the old crowd out of the woodwork. This time it was just a few friends at a low key affair, at the home of The Squire. The Squire is another good friend, who has been a long-time friend (and some-time roommate, sharing an apartment) of The Bear. Squire lives close enough to the ocean that you can smell it and is a favorite gathering place.
Maybe it’s the ocean. I think it’s the beer he brews in his garage that brings out the locals.
But a splendid time was had by all. Great weather, cool temps, awesome swordfish dinnah. Just say it as it’s spelled. Then you’ll be a authentic Mainer.
I still haven’t repaired the Jetta. Come to find out that the noise was coming from the wheels. On the same afternoon The Bear came into town, the Squire and his brother helped me repack the rear wheel bearings. After we finished, I roadtested the wheels.
Did you ever have that hopeful feeling when, after doing a repair at home on the car, you believe you’ve eliminated the problem, and then found out you hadn’t? Oh, yes. When I roadtested the car the same noise was there.
Now the prognosis is that it’s the FRONT bearing that need repacking. The Squire’s brother is a mechanic with access to a bearing press. We’ve made arrangements to rendes…
ronday…
you know what I mean, get together to get the work done. Stay tuned for the conclusion of that tale.
Hey, not a bad post. Maybe I don’t need the Muses after all.
No such luck. They’re under contract for an indefinite run.
I live in a state that people want to visit in the summer. They want to camp by a lake and enjoy the calm quiet, interrupted only by a passing jet ski or motor boat. They want to rent a cottage by the shore and spend their days at the beach. They want to eat overpriced seafood because it’s so much cheaper than at home. And they clog up the highway going home on Sunday.
I want to go somewhere, too. I want to go on a road trip.
This trip is not the kind of vacation nightmares I had as a kid growing up. It wasn’t the vacations, but the traveling to and from the vacation location. For awhile, my folks owned a 1968 VW Bus, which was great for hauling around 4 screaming kids. We’d go camping, trips to the ocean, and the annual trip to my grandparents in Connecticut. But then, in a fit of insanity, my Dad decided the Volkswagen needed to go. He obviously thought we needed to upgrade to a vehicle that suited a family of our size. A vehicle that could accomodate pre-teen aged boys and girls. So, what do you think he bought.
He decided on a 1972 Dodge Dart.
Yes, a Dart. It was a four-door sedan with room for six, but only if you squeezed three in the front and back seat. Gone was the space to stretch out. Gone was the coveted back seat, the furthest point away from my parents, where you could lie down and feel like you were invisable. Going from a VW Bus to a Dodge Dart was like having the Brady Bunch move into a studio apartment.
But I liked the fact that we would go somewhere, and that’s the feeling I have now. I am planning to visit my folks when I take my last week of vacation in September.
Don’t you get two weeks of vacation? What happened to the other week of vacation? Oh, gentle reader, I did a foolish thing, a choice made while blinded by love. I spent it in Las Vegas in February. At the time it wasn’t so foolish. In fact, I got the offer of a lifetime. The woman I was dating (see the post Open Letter to the Woman Who Broke My Heart) was preparing to celebrate her 50th birthday. She didn’t want to stay in the Northeast, where it’s snows in February. Because it was the Big 5-0, she wanted to do it with style. She wanted to go somewhere warm. Last year, she went to Florida and left me at home. This year, it was Vegas, baby, and she wanted me there with her. She wanted me there so badly that she offered to pay for my plane ticket and hotel, along with the shows she wanted to see. I took care of the cost of my show tickets. The only thing I had to be concerned with was food and gambling money.
But something didn’t feel right. I felt like a kept man. I was her arm candy, and there was something that made me feel uncomfortable about being there. I thought maybe it was a percieved lack of control, that I didn’t plan this trip and it was out of my hands. We only made love once during our trip. It wasn’t until the break-up that I realized that was the beginning of the end. All the giddiness was gone from the relationship, and I was starting to feel….settled.
But, that’s in the past. I want to hit the road and travel at my own pace. I want to visit places I want to see and eat what I want. My inspiration is a book entitled, “Blue Highways” by William Least Heat Moon. In a nutshell: our hero loses his job teaching English at a state university, and his wife leaves him for another man. His reaction is to hit the road. He tricks out his van for the trip, sort of the ultimate road machine, and heads out to discover America. He doesn’t travel the superhighways. Instead, he travels the “blue” highways: the roads that go through all the towns the big higways bypassed. For example, the old Route 1 from Maine to Key West, Florida is a blue highway. Although, parts of it are taken over by I95, the older sections of the road are still there. You get a sense of what America was like before superhighways
I flunked out of college after my freshman year. I will freely admit this, and it happened for two reason: lack of discipline and bad advice from a professor. I will take responsibility for the discipline. The professor, who I met with during Freshman Orientation, told me to take a full boat of 5 classes per semester. I was not prepared for the workload that was awaiting me.
It didn’t help that I discovered the campus radio station and focused my attention on being on the air.
During the year I spent at home, trying to earn some money and figure out what I wanted to do with my future, I hooked up with a casual friend, who would soon became one of my best friends. Chris and I graduated in the same high school class. Back inthe day, he wore these black horned rim glasses, which made him look like Buddy Holly. We traveled in different circles during our senior year. It was after we graduated that I got to know him from working in the strawberry fields not far from my house. The owners of the farm were members of my dad’s parish. He was a Danish engineer who taught at MIT. She ran a program at Boston College to teach people how to teach the blind. They also ran an organic strawberry farm and they would hire local kids to work the fields. The best part of the job was that we were paid, in cash, at the end of the day. Chris and I would work there for a couple hours a night, and we would have our beer money, or just walking around money. It was the easiest money I ever made.
From there, Chris and I were inseperable. We would go to the movies. We would go roller skating Wednesday nights because the ratio of girls to guys was 3 to 1. We’d hang out at classmates’ houses. Most of these guys I knew, but we didn’t hang out. These were the ones who didn’t go off to school. They had good paying jobs with Bose and still lived at home. We would sit around, drink beer and listen to music. I was exposed to more great music in those days that at any time. Chris helped me to broaden my social circle. We also talked about ourselves and our plans. We talked about the girls we dated, but not like the bragging we’d hear in the locker rooms. We’d talk about how those girls made us feel. Her trusted me and I trusted him. He gave me the gift of belonging at a time when I felt so isolated. I will always be grateful to him for that gift.
We also made road trips. The preferred vehicle was his 1974 Ford Maverick. Chris didn’t like riding in my VW Bug. He would hold for dear life, onto the bar above the glove box. I wasn’t a bad driver, but I think it was the size of the vehicle that made him nervous. We would frequently we’d head to Amherst and the University of Massachusetts. Chris was still a student there and there were plenty of places we could stay. It was usually the floor of someone’s dorm room. Sometimes we were invited to a few sorority parties, usually the invitations came from girls who lived in Chris’ dorm. Once I stayed in the bed of a girl I had only know four hours. First time, not so great.
But I loved taking to the open road. I would visit my grandparents in Connecticut. I visited my sister at Westfield State. I would travel into Boston to watch the Red Sox. I actually like driving in Boston, even with the one-way streets. I can honestly say I never got lost.
A long time ago, maybe 30 years ago, I would get a severe case of wanderlust every May. Why May? you ask. I went on exchange to Germany my senior year in high school. Our school sponsored a program that hosted students from a gymnasium in Menden, in the Sauerland, southeast of Dortmund. I partipated in the third year of the program, which was a month-long stay.
Oh, did I tell you it was an all-girls school?
It was that experience that inspired me to travel. Ever since May 1979, I get the travel bug. But now I get it all through the year. When I worked for the airline, it was easy to satisfy my urges. We flew direct to New York and Chicago, and could connect to anywhere in the country. I wasn’t always able to get the time, but the opportunities were there.
I now have set a goal for travel in 2010: my goal is to visit my friend Adam in St. Andrews and go to the Open Championship.
Here’s a thought: what kind of life could you have if your never traveled more than 50 miles from home? Would you have a sense that you were part of a greater global community, or would your world be defined by the distance you traveled in your lifetime? There are people all over the country who have lived in the same town as their parents and grandparents, who have never seen the amazing sights of our country, except the hills and fields and forests surrounding their hometown. Would they be better people for staying there, or would taking a chance to see the world beyond their world?
I was given an unexpected gift this morning. For some strange reason, my body left its own wakeup call for 5am, instead of waking with the alarm at 6am. As I lay there, wrapped in untucked sheets and comforter, I thought I could just ease myself back to sleep. It seemed like a simple thing. I knew that I would be one of the walking undead for rising too soon. But, noooo! The brain wanted to get up and the body had to follow. So I decided on an alternate plan. Just lay in bed and daydream. As I was enjoying the warmth and coziness, I heard a sound that gave me a contented feeling. I had left the window above the head of the bed open overnight, to allow for the cool breeze to drift in my bedroom (which is also my living room). Along with the breeze came the far-off cry of seagulls that had wandered in from the harbor. I believe they were drawn by the smell of dinner, in the form of that morning’s trash pickup. They are nasty scavengers that don’t pick up after themselves, ripping open plastic trash bags, in search of scraps intended for a compost pile. I see the remants of their picking along the street as I walk to work in the morning.
But, despite their reputations as “sea rats”, I like the sound of gulls. It’s easy to imagine waking up on an island, the sounds of gentle waves mixing with the cry of the gull. It is more pleasurable to hear them from a distance. The calls are gentler and lose the screetching quality that puts off some folk. It’s a relaxing sound, better than any sound machine to put you to sleep.
It’s that simple sound that brought me pleasure. I could close my eyes and think about days at the shore, digging in the sand. Making holes, not sand castles. The ones big enough to bury someone up to their neck. I would think about watching the gulls drifting on the cool ocean breeze at sunset, slowly gliding and going nowhere in particular. I remembered walking at low tide and skimming flat stones, trying to get them to skip more the 4 or 5 times. The simple act of searching for sea glass and shells. looking for the big clam shells we could use as a soap dish.
I have lived in New England all my life and have been blessed with the gifts of the beach and the ocean. I can’t imagine growing up in Kansas or Nebraska, far from the sound of seagulls and smell of seaweed at low tide. I know Kansas and Nebraska offer their own unique experience. It’s just not the New England shore. I can’t imagine living my life and be denied the pleasures of the shoreline.
I have re-discovered these simple pleasures with the arrival of warm summer weather. I took my lawn chair, a book and a cold drink with me to the beach. I’d read a little, do some people watching, read some more, maybe walk in the water for awhile. But it was a nice, relaxing way to spend the afternoon.
I really pull some great energy from the sea. It’s as if the salty water of my body cries out to reconnect with the ocean. I am rejuvinated when I step onto the sand, my feet covered. It’s hard to step in loose sand, you can never push off because the sand is so loose, it shifts as you step. My mind can easily drift back to childhood and carrying a pail and shovel for digging.
One beach I remember was on the Connecticut coast, a state park. There was a tunnel that led from the parking lot to the beach. My sisters and I would yell to each other, trying to get an echo. Above the tunnel was a wooden railroad bridge, for the commuter line that ran between New York and Providence, RI, then up to Boston. The train would usually run in each direction once during our visit to the beach. We’d get the midday train from Manhattan and the afternoon commuter run down from Boston or Providence. Whenever the engineer would blow the whistle to signal the train’s arrival and passing, a mass exodus of kids would run for the tunnel, a youthful rush of adrenaline. That tunnel would be crammed with kids, waiting for the train to pass overhead. They would yell and scream with delight, their voices echoing as the train passed overhead, creating a magical energy. After the train passed, they returned to the cool ocean water, to their blankets and sandcastles, or maybe their transistor radios playing the latest summertime hits.
There was also a great pavilion perched on a knoll above the beach. It was an impressive building with a fieldstone facade that could be seen all up and down the beach. It could have been a WPA project or part of some beach resort. The building housed the snack bar, with a wide veranda with long picnic tables where you could enjoy your food and watch the ocean. I remember saving up spare change so I could buy french fries and a grape soda. I felt so grown up going there and placing my order by myself. I may have been alone in the snack bar, but my sister joined me. Mom didn’t want us there alone, even though this was back before abductons and child molesters.
It wouldn’t suprise me if I discovered that the building housed a ballroom at one time. There were several large rooms with seating for 300 or more people. I could imagine Benny Goodman, Count Basie or Duke Ellington swinging the night away, their fans dancing into an ecstatic frenzy. It was a popular pasttime to drive down to the shore, spend the day at the arcade or on the beach, maybe enjoy some french fries, and spend the evening dancing to a popular band. It seems quaint and anachronistic to think about those simple times with simple, but satisfying, entertainment.
Sometimes I wonder if those really were the good old days.
