My Buddy Craig Bowers

 Way back in the summer of 1980 I decided to stop hiding out in my parents' house, and get a social life going. As was my usual pattern, when I decided to do something, I did it on a grand scale. I became one of the hard core theatre people at Riverside Theatre, and I became a regular patron at a watering hole in downtown Vero called Copperfield's. 

The bartender at Copperfield's was a lovely, nice, funny woman named Linda, and we became friends almost immediately. One evening in November, there were a couple of weirdos in the bar at closing time, so Linda asked me if I would walk home with her, for protection. Once there, she invited me in to talk and smoke and have a beer or three, which I did. About an hour later her husband came home from the gig he had been playing. I was nervous that he might be upset that I was there, but no, it was totally cool. He picked up the acoustic guitar beside his chair and began just playing notes and chords which I soon recognized to be the musical soundtrack to our conversation. 

He was very interested in the fact that I was employed as a graphic artist at Emerson Art Service. He said he had always been interested in that stuff, and he showed me some drawings he had done. I was polite and appreciative, but you know my dad and I were constantly bombarded with drawings from people who believed that they could do our work. Our work required a specific skillset that had very little to do with the ability to draw nice pictures. Craig was also interested that I was involved in theatre; show biz was his life too. 

As time went on, the Bowers houses (they rarely lived in one house for very long) were my after-theatre hangouts. If one or both were home, I stopped in to talk and smoke and have a beer or a Coca-Cola. I met their younguns, Cyndie and Heather and they hung out with us sometimes. I had a family away from home and away from my theatre family. I enjoyed this time very much. 

Before the beginning of my second year at Riverside Theatre, their long-time sound guru Mike Gerbhart announced that he was resigning, so they'd better get someone else to do it. I volunteered, having some experience with microphones and speakers and reel-to-reel recording. It was great fun finding just the right music and just the right sound effects, turning them into sound cues and running a sound show as part of the show. About mid-season, I had a Western thriller, The Chase to do and I thought, "I know someone who could effortlessly create a musical soundtrack for this." Of course Craig agreed to do it. He watched one rehearsal, came up to the sound booth with his guitar and he and I, musician and technician, created a multi-track block of music for pre-show, entre-act and curtain call, all in about an hour and a half. We were both very proud of it.

1982 was a big turning point, because Copperfield's closed, squeezing off Linda's income. Bartender jobs were impossible to come by in Vero Beach. Her occasional gigs at Dodgertown were not much help. Craig needed to step up his music game and maybe even (God forbid!) get a job! At this same time, a very popular band called High Tide was losing its lead guitarist/ singer to severe hearing loss. Their drummer and their bass guitarist/singer approached Craig about creating a new hybrid band with Craig and one of his sporadic bandmates, keyboardist/singer Randy Jones. Craig had heard High Tide and was hesitant. He knew that they made so much noise, you could barely hear vocals or instrumental leads. He asked me if I would be willing to be their sound man, to control the noise as much as I could. Of course I agreed. Craig told them he'd do it if they took me on as sound man. Streettalk was born.

While the band was rehearsing and I was familiarizing myself with their music, Craig's automobile tag fee came due. I showed up at his house to go to rehearsal, and he was affixing his sticker to his tag. I was just waiting around for him to get done, when something about the sticker caught my eye. It was a flaw, something you'd never see from ten feet away, that told me it was a fake. "Did you make that?" He admitted it. Hmmm. So the next day at Emerson Art Service, I told my dad that I thought Craig would be an asset to the business. That evening I asked Craig if he would be interested in a job at EAS. He said he would. He met with Gil, my dad, showed him some samples of his work, and my dad agreed to give him a  try. From September, 1982 until sometime after my dad sold the business in 1988, Craig worked for Emerson Art Service, his first long-term full time job..

So now, on rehearsal nights and performance nights, Craig and I worked together from 9:00am to 11:00pm or 2:30am. And still we were friends. Then, to make matters even more complex, The Bowers Bunch was bumped out of yet another house just as one of my dad's rental properties was coming up empty. Once again I asked. Once again everyone agreed, and my two families became one, all within a couple of months, all within a couple of blocks. 

This shows how close we were. Heather, then 13, said she wanted to see snow. I said I would make it happen. In December of  1982, I bought two 7-day Greyhound Ameripasses, and with Craig and Linda's blessing we got on busses and spent two days in New York City and one day playing in a foot of snow in Buffalo, took a short side trip to Niagara Falls, Ontario, and made it home on Christmas Eve. Before that the farthest she had been from Vero Beach was Daytona. We have pictures.

I left Streettalk in the spring of '83 because I was involved with a woman with a toddler that desperately needed a dad. I did theatre sporadically, saw Streettalk occasionally, but worked shoulder to shoulder with Craig for eight hours and was still part of the Bowers family. Linda was helpful planning my wedding in '83, which rattled on until the summer of '85. 

Then in the fall of 1985 a cute young legal secretary named Carmen showed up at the theatre. My wife was living with her boyfriend, so I asked this cute young legal secretary if she would write me up a dandy divorce, which she did. So Carmen and I married in 1986, and as soon as the Dodger programs went to press in '87 we moved to St. Cloud, Florida. Craig and Linda came over to visit us a couple of times, and we visited them every time we went to Vero Beach to see my parents, but when we moved to Boston, then Albuquerque, then northwest Pennsylvania, we fell out of touch. 

We recently reconnected through Facebook, but the magic was gone. And now so are Craig and Linda. I cherish a decade or more of memories of  the whole family, but mostly of Craig, my friend, my co-worker, my collaborator, my brother from another mother. 

Open Wide

 There is a little background to this story. Since my years in Boston, when my commute to work started with a 5:00 bus out of Watertown, I have been in the habit of getting up at 3:30 in the morning and eating a peanut butter sandwich. This results in my getting hungry around 10:00. This schedule has persisted throughout the sixteen years since.

I have a new primary care physician here in Yulee. She prescribed a dental checkup - my last was ten years ago. I went to what she called "the McDonald's of dentistry," Aspen Dental. I got x-rayed, a cleaning, a filling and a crown over four visits The temporary crown was replaced with the permanent one a week and a half ago. The filling was done that same day, and they also tried to do a 3D scan of my mouth for a new partial plate. This is done with a high tech thing the size and shape of a Coke bottle, which is smushed around the inside and outside of the gum line. Unfortunately, the scanner was malfunctioning, so they sent me home with a promise to bring me back when it was operational.

The next part of the story is that my numbed-up self was starving when I got home at 11:30, after two and a half hours at the dentist. I grabbed a slice of leftover pizza and began glomming down. At some point my tongue touched my still-numb lower lip, and it felt funny - and not in a fun way. Some time during my feeding frenzy, I chomped my lip a good one - and not in a good way.

A week and a half later, my lip still very tender, they brought me in for scanning. I arrived early for my 9:00 appointment, which was good, because at 9:50, after an hour in the waiting room, I was in the chair, fixin' to be scanned. The technician would scan a while, take the scanner images to the dentist for approval, come back and scan some more. This went on until 10:45, when she pronounced me finished. My lip was throbbing.

I headed straight to the McDonald's of hamburger joints. I was just pulling out of the drive through when my phone rang. It was Aspen Dental. Could I please come back for some more scanning. I wanted to eat my burger on the way, for the onion breath if nothing else, but who knows what that might do to the scanner. 

Another fifteen minutes of scanning ensued, and the scan was finally deemed complete. I asked the technician whatever happened to biting down on a clay mold maker, like they did ten years ago for my first partial, and which only took five minutes instead of three hours. She said this was a much better system when it was working properly. I certainly hope so.

Bad News For Productivity

 Here in our new neighborhood there are several nice ponds, home to alligators, turtles, fish and many species of birds. This morning, on the home stretch of our walk, Grace and I skirted the near shore of the pond nearest our house. Fish were snapping and popping the surface all along the edge and as far as thirty feet out - just within easy casting range.

I hurried home and found my rod and the box in which my fishing stuff was packed. By the time I got my line threaded and my hook, sinker and rubber worm installed, a good half hour had gone by. I snuck out without the dog and headed for the pond - a good three minute walk away - and flung my worm into the space between clusters of lillies. Within five seconds, I was reeling in a little ten inch bass. I released it and kept fishing. About five casts later I tied into one quite a bit bigger, but it broke the surface and shook my hook out of its mouth. That was enough to keep me fishing for another forty-five minutes without any more action. I know that I was only in on the last few minutes of the action we witnessed on the dog walk. 

Now that my gear is all set up, I fear that I will be running off to the pond at the pop of a fish mouth, come hell or housekeeping. Sorry boss.

An Old Dream Reignited

 Fifty years ago I dreamed of being a writer. I clung to that dream for two decades before coming to the abrupt realization that, truth be told, I was not ever going to be a writer.

Eleven years ago, I started writing my four blogs, because those stories were burning to be told, and through blogging I could publish them without having to be a commercial success. Basically, they are the autobiography of someone that nobody has heard of.

A couple of weeks ago, I listened to a book about self-discipline, and an unexpected by-product was the abrupt realization that, truth be told, maybe I could be a writer. I signed up for access to firstwriter.com, and Carmen gave me their Writers' Handbook for Christmas. The result: today I submitted a story to Please See Me magazine's writing contest. More submissions to more publishers to follow.

Stay tuned for updates! 

A Christmas Story

 I love this memory from 1976. I was a beat-up depressed person, back in Vero Beach after the Bicentennial craziness that nearly did me in, back working as a forklift driver at The Packers of Indian River grapefruit packing house. My best buddy Doug and I spent our lunch hours playing cards, so I knew he loved cards. I had (and still have) a deck of solid plastic playing cards that he admired, so I bought a deck for him. Also, he and his wife often took their canoe out to the waterways around the county, so when I saw an advertisement in the Miami Herald for a book about the "Canoe Trails of Florida," I bought one of those. 

On Christmas Eve I walked over to their house to drop off my neatly wrapped presents. Doug invited me in. His wife was on the couch with a map of Florida. "We want to go canoeing tomorrow, but we're having a hard time figuring out where to go," she said. I handed her the book. "I reckon you'd better open this now." 

They were delighted, of course. She took the book and began digging through it. "So, you want to stay a while and play some cards?" I did . Doug went looking in drawers and shelves all through the house. "Honey, where are the cards?" She didn't know. " Sorry, man, I can't find the cards. "

"I reckon you'd better open this now, " I said. 

The next day, my depression eased up. Merry Christmas.

The End Of An Era

 When I started writing blogs eleven years ago, the first one I created was this one. At the time I was unemployed in Albuquerque, applying for hundreds (yes hundreds!) of jobs and taking care of three mammals - two cats and one Reverend-in-training. One of those mammals was Remus Lupin, the subject of this posting. 

One evening in October of 2003, we were on our way to the house of a friend of a friend who had kittens to give away. We were completely immersed in the Harry Potter books at the time, so when we saw the big bright full moon overhead, we both immediately decided that our new boy kitten would be named after the werewolf, Remus John Lupin. At that time he was one of four cats living with us.

One favorite memory of the boy happened very soon after we brought him home. He disappeared for a whole day. We looked everywhere for him, to no avail. We supposed he must have gotten out somehow. That evening, we were sitting on the sectional sofa with our neighbor, telling her that the kitten was missing, when a tiny head appeared from behind and between two sofa cushions. Remus came crawling out of his little cave, blinking and meowing for his supper. 

Feeding the cats with Remus in the mix is how I earned the title of Cat Juggler. The only way for other cats to be able to eat is to put some food down for Remus in a room with a latching door, otherwise he will eat everybody's food before they have a chance. He grew rapidly to a 19 pounder, a formidable kitty. 

His favorite toys were rubber bands, which he would stretch and snap across the room and chase. In '05  Remus and I moved the first truckload from Orlando to Belmont, Massachusetts. I carried him into the totally empty apartment, set him down, and he ran over to the far corner. There was a rubber band there. He played with it for several minutes before he realized that he was in an unfamiliar place. Then he dashed to the bathroom and hid behind the tub for a couple of days.

In Massachusetts he began one annoying habit, the first of many. When I was bending over to scoop litter boxes or clean up a mess on the floor, he would jump up on my back, claws fully engaged. Ouch.

Grace is our first dog. We've always had cats. When we were married, we each brought a cat to the relationship. By the time Grace came into the mix we had parented eight cats over twenty-six years. In 2012 we had the two we still have, Remus and Lucia. Remus was the boss of the household. That all changed when Princess Grace entered, and what an entrance it was! Remus could hear us coming up the stairs from the basement/garage, so he was at the door when it opened. Grace saw him and lunged at him. He took off across the counters, the dinner table and over to the sideboard, where the beautiful Southwestern bowl, an ordination gift from the Albuquerque congregation, went flying through the air and crashed on the ceramic tile floor. Welcome home, Grace! They get along fine now, but Remus has been avenging his fall from power with vomit and turds all over the house ever since.

So Remus traveled with us from Orlando to Belmont, to Watertown, MA, to Albuquerque, to Meadville, PA, to two addresses in Nashville and now to Jacksonville, where he is seventeen years old, 9 pounds of skin and bones and crying a lot. Saturday, Sepotember 12th will be his death day at the vet's office. He is one major pain in the ass, and he will be missed.

What's Shakin'?

Is there anyone out there in my vast readership who doesn't know about my tremors? In elementary school I got low grades in penmanship. During my high school years I began my second longest career as a graphic artist, back in the days of ink and xacto knives. During those thirteen years I struggled with the tremors, and learned to master them as necessary to complete the line I was drawing at the time, lifting my hand from the drawing when I felt a surge of shakes coming on. My daily concentration helped keep them in check (mostly) but they were always lurking.

When I moved to Orlando in '87, I found a new expression of my artistic prime directive building scenery, exhibits and displays for twenty five years. The shakes were a lesser challenge in this larger format, but still a challenge when I was up on a ladder, a scaffold or a snorkel lift trying to install a three inch screw in a piece of scenery, or assemble a bolt, two washers and a nut in a tight space. My relaxation of strict daily control made them stronger, and as the years have passed, the tremors have gotten gradually worse. In 2006 I earned the nickname "shakes," given to me by my co-worker Nick. (Otherwise it could have been a mattname from my co-worker Matt.)

After that most excellent career, I worked for three years mixing, selling and delivering paint for Sherwin Williams. By then, it took two hands to write legibly, so any phone orders I took were horribly scrawled. Even I couldn't read some of them. 

I have come to rely on the keyboard for written communication. The tiny virtual keyboard on my phone is very difficult to manage, but at least the result is legible. For long sessions, the big keyboard on my laptop is my preferred technology. Even so, I hit wrong keys or two keys at a time quite often. Luckily, the fixing is easy. But touch typing is not, nor has it ever been an option.

Nowadays I take seven prescriptions daily, and two of them have been prescribed specifically to deal with tremors. And yet, they still control my destiny. Just for a fun building project, I recently ordered a wooden model, a marble run with gears and levers and such. I also wanted to see if I could actually do it. Twice now, I have progressed to step 15, only to have some of the already assembled pieces wiggle apart while attempting to do step 16, sending me back to step eight. Very frustrating. 

There is some hope on the horizon. I'm getting set up to see Jacksonville's go-to neurology guy for tremors. I hope he can do something. Someday I want to finish that marble run.

Unmasked

I suppose I should have seen it coming. Since we are hearing Confessions here, I must confess that I almost never try to figure out who dunnit or what is fixin' to happen unless there is a compelling reason to do so. I just know that the answers will reveal themselves in due time, and attempting to guess is just impatience on my part. Some might opine that such patience is a liability. I must confess that sometimes it is.

Therefore, although it should have come as no surprise when I first encountered this new wrinkle in an old pet peeve, I must confess that it surprised me. The peeve to which I refer is the great American tradition of throwing trash on the ground anywhere one happens to be. I was taught not to do this, but sometimes I feel as if I'm the only one. We might even be a majority, but the trash-flinging contingent certainly makes up for it. Anyone who walks as much as I do cannot fail to notice. It's everywhere.

So now, in the grip of a deadly pandemic, with masks being worn by many in public places, discarded masks have joined the food wrappers, bottles, cans and other miscellaneous trash littering the roadsides and parking lots of this great land of ours. I should have seen it coming.

Mama B - My Other Mother

 Michael J. Buinickas and I became friends in Boy Scouts in 1966, but I did not become a Buinickas until the summer of '68. I walked into their house on Maple Ridge Lane, and was immediately offered food and a choice of beverages, and made comfortable in Mama B's home. Mr. B was my Scout Master and drill sergeant, but Jessica was my mom away from home. Margaret became my big sister, Michael was my older brother, Bill and Barbara my younger siblings. I actually felt more at home there than I did at home.

That same summer, my parents moved me to Florida, far away from everyone and everything I had ever known. During the summers of '69, 70 and '71 I basically showed up on the Buinickas doorstep and was welcomed in, staying for days or weeks before I'd have to return to school in Florida. I had a bed, a place at the table and chores to do including the dreaded "water under the house" detail.

I knew that this home away from home was the handiwork of Jessica Buinickas, and that she had schooled her children in the fine art of hospitality. I have never experienced the like anywhere else in the fifty-odd years since.

Bill's eulogy for his brother in 1997 emphasized that Michael had always been the one who kept the far-flung family together, and I'm sorry to admit that after his passing, I fell away. One very brief visit in 2000 was the last time I saw any of the nuclear family of which I have had the joy and honor to feel a part. Twenty years later, I am back in Florida mourning the passing of Jessica Buinickas from afar.

When Margaret joined Facebook, she friended me, so I still feel connected to my other family, especially now that my biological parents and brother are gone.

And now, I reckon that Marge is matriarch, her mother's shoes thrust upon her. Don't worry, Marge, Jess's family is and has always been your family, and we'll love you through this. 

New Ways

Once again I am entering uncharted territory here. I am trying to keep these blogs fairly current, but nothing has been pressing my creative buttons of late. There are a few things that might be blogworthy. I'll leave that judgment to you-uns (that's Pittsburghian for "y'all") to decide.

Shopping. Who'da thunk such a mundane thing as buying groceries would become a hazardous activity? So now, every source of groceries has some form of contact-free delivery - some even free contact-free delivery. The only one we've tried is BJ's, shopped and delivered by InstaCart. It's sort of like an online game. We select the items we want and put them in our cart, then pay for them. At some point we get a notification that someone, and we are told their name, is shopping. If we watch the app, one by one items go from the cart list to the shopped list. Sometimes an item is out of stock, and an alternate is suggested. We can approve the replacement or have that item refunded. Then the shopper is at the checkout, and it's too late to add or change anything. Then the shopper is on the way. And when the notification comes that she/he is almost here, we open the door and there the vehicle is, rounding the last turn into the parking lot. Groceries are unloaded onto the porch, and we bring them in for disinfecting and putting away. It's easier than the old way!

I told mt neighbor the other day that if this goes on much longer, I'm going to have to invest in a comb. The last time I can remember having hair long enough to comb was in the previous century - the previous millennium even. But it's the beard that gets "wooly-bully" and makes me crazy. Cutting my own hair, with my benign essential tremors, is a very risky project, but I did set my clippers on 2 and chopped back my wooly-bully beard last week. More exciting than that, however, was that Carmen, emboldened by my action and driven insane by her own hair growth, set my clippers on 13 and chopped hers back. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Worst of all, though is the plight of our poor abused bassador. Her favorite activity during our walks is being loved on by nearly everyone we meet. Her plaintive cries as I pull her away are heartbreaking for everyone involved.

Other than that, life goes on pretty much as usual.

Plague

As I was washing my hands (again) this morning, I was musing (again) about this pandemic, and thinking about what I have read over the years concerning the centuries long bubonic / pneumonic plagues in Europe and the "civilized" world. Those people had no clue what caused it, how it transmitted, or how to avoid being infected. Hygiene was probably not even a word yet, and certainly not practiced by anybody. Fear was rampant, and anyone who offered an explanation or a plan of action, however ludicrous it might sound to us in this century, was given credence.

Now I see and hear political and "religious" " leaders " blaming the coronavirus on whatever target group suits their agenda, or Satan, or Obama or anything or anyone. I am thankful that in this century, we have the option to listen to many different sources of information, including those whose only agenda is to get us through this as painlessly as possible.

I have a friend in Virginia, a microbiologist / belly dancer, who has been working over a hundred hours a week, trying to figure out how to combat this beast (by microbiology, not belly dancing) and a best friend / wife who works at a hospital, where all the latest information is put into practice. Those are the kind of sources I trust, not the finger pointing "news" channels or the creepy preachers bent on demonizing whatever or whoever they want us to perceive as enemies. Here in the twenty first century, we can choose between fear based and love based information. Choose love, my friends, choose love.

Going Viral

This post is unusual because I truly don't have a clue what I'm going to say. I just feel it's my duty to weigh in on the coronavirus situation, since pretty much everyone else on the planet has done so. My email trash file is littered with responses from grocery chains, pharmacy chains, restaurant chains, hardware chains, paint store chains, AAA, AARP, AT&T, the UUA and everybody else. Evidently it's the thing to do, so here goes.

First of all, wash your hands. That's number one on everyone's list. Wash 'em long and hard and frequently. Stay away from other humans. I have been doing that for many years. Of course, when I do encounter humans, it's on a city bus or the Skyway. And of course, when Carmen comes home after spending all day at the hospital, where they wash their hands hundreds of times a day.

Beyond the standard cautions about infection, there is also a positive side to the situation. Facebook has been richly peppered with ideas for things to do while stuck at home with your family or just yourself - and many of them have been very good ideas. For me, though, the upside is that this frantic, manic culture of ours is being forced to slow down or even come to a complete stop. We have an opportunity here to learn that life doesn't have to be run at a breakneck pace. I have no illusions about this, however. Every opportunity that has come along so far has been embraced by many and also exploited by many, and the pace picks up again as soon as enough people forget what it was all about. I can only expect the same this time. But I can hope.

One really nice thing for me is that Susan Werner, my favorite singer song writer, is doing free online concerts for her fans, due to cancellations of her upcoming in-person gigs. We saw her twice in Boston, but 2009 was the last time she came anywhere near where we have lived since then. Last Sunday evening was "All Request Night," and this coming Sunday she'll be doing all new stuff. I can't wait!

Anyhoo, y'all stay safe out there. I only have about six loyal readers, so losing of even one of y'all would be a huge loss. And don't forget to say a silent thank you to Vicki VanGundy for pushing me off the edge and making me swim in the pool of my four blogs again.

And wash your damn hands!

The Oak Leaf Hotel

I was really not aware of the phenomenon of homelessness until the late 80s. If there were homeless people in Odenton, Maryland in the 50s and 60s, I never encountered them. Vero Beach, Florida, same deal. It wasn't until 1988, when I began working for Image International doing huge corporate theme parties, that I came in contact with this class of humans. Al, the owner/CEO/Big Cheese employed a production manager, a truck driver, lighting guys, A/V guys, shop guys and a warehouse boss. All of the additional labor came from a temp agency.

We never knew what we were going to get temp-wise. Some were pretty sharp, ready and willing to "get some work did." Some were sullen and difficult. Some were barely upright and likely to be discovered sleeping somewhere - and at the Marriott World Center, that was frowned upon. Most were there to put in their time, do the work and get paid. Some we would request if they were available, and some we would send back with the delivery driver if they showed up. The one consistent trait was that none of them were around very long - maybe six months at the most. They would just disappear, and nobody knew anything about it unless maybe if they were arrested. And if Image hired one on, he would never last longer than a few days before he would disappear, never to be seen again.

I get why some folks say that homeless people are homeless because they want to be. From the viewpoint of the privileged it can appear that way. Speaking as one who has worked shoulder to shoulder with these guys, shared food and conversation with these guys, I can say that it's simply not that simple. For the most part, they are homeless because they have to be, because, for whatever reason - drugs, alcohol, brain damage, mental illness, PTSD (I worked with a LOT of Vietnam veterans) - they just do not have the wherewithal to be an upstanding citizen. The rigors of managing money, paying rent, showing up for work on time, keeping themselves clean and presentable are simply beyond their capacity. Most are really nice people who will never be accepted into society, so the homeless community is what they have.

One really touching moment during my six and a half years with Image happened when I took the bus from International Drive to downtown Orlando to meet up with Carmen after work. I was grungy and unkempt after a hard day's carpenting, and wearing my Image International T-shirt. When I got off the bus at the downtown terminal, there were several grungy and unkempt guys nearby. We didn't know each other at all, but they assumed I was one of them. "Hey, Brother, you all right? Need anything?" I assured them that I was fine, thanked them and went on my way, but I was humbled by the fact that these guys who had almost nothing to call their own, were happy to offer help to a fellow.

The title of this post is a quote from one of our temporary workers one lunch break. A frequent topic of conversation was "Where did you stay last night?" Beneath overpasses of I-4 were popular sleeping spots. Doorways and alleys were also high on the list. This one dude, who had slept in a cluster of trees, said "I had a room at the Oak Leaf Hotel." It doesn't get any better than that.

A Royal ... Flush

In November of 2018 we bought this condominium with three bedrooms and three full bathrooms. One bathroom is downstairs, geezer friendly, with an "ADA" toilet, a shower with a low step-in entry, and grab bars for security and easy ups and downs. We have a guest bedroom upstairs with its own bathroom attached. No geezer accommodations included. Bathroom three is upstairs, off of the room designated as the office. We keep a litter box in the tub, and only I go in there and only to clean the litter box. With one notable exception.

In October of 2019 we had friends from Nashville come stay with us for a few days. One fine morning, Carmen was accompanying them on an adventure - I don't have the vaguest recollection what or where - so bathrooms one and two were in use. Not to be too graphic, I needed to use one, and the only one was three. Now, I'm sure that we, and the Inspector, flushed that toilet to ascertain that it worked. I'm also fairly sure that it had not been "stress tested" by anyone since the previous owners, if then. The bottom line is, when I came down to the kitchen a few minutes later, I found that much of what I had done upstairs had also come down to the kitchen. It was not a joyful discovery.

I called our home warranty folks, and they arranged for a plumber to come. The plumbing company asked if I wanted a water damage remediation company to come, and I said yes. Meanwhile, I, a bottle of bleach and a roll of paper towels cleaned the cabinets, counter and floor. Not a joyful project.

The plumber ascertained that the wax ring under the toilet was at fault. He replaced it, and the plumbing part of the story was finished. Simultaneously, a guy from Dri-Maxx was there assessing the water damage situation. There was water behind one of the cabinets and the drywall - well, wet-wall. He told me about how my homeowner's insurance would pay for the lion's share of the drying and rebuilding process, and we signed an agreement.

Later that same day, two guys with implements of destruction and two drying fans came, tore out one cabinet (yay, only one cabinet!) the drywall behind it, and part of the soffit above it. They taped up a sheet of plastic with a zipper in the middle over the kitchen entrance, and turned on the fans. They left, but returned each morning for three days to check the drying progress. Oh, and they took the cabinet door with them to match for the rebuild.

Meanwhile, the first Dri-Maxx guy called. "Uh, well, your insurance carrier does NOT pay anything for drying and rebuilding. Sorry. We can still rebuild you for nine million dollars (maybe a slight exaggeration) or we can leave that to you." Thanks, but leave it to me. And bring my cabinet door back. He did.

So, the plastic and the fans were taken away, and we were left with a gaping hole between two upper cabinets. I began researching cabinets for sale, and discovered that pretty much every company was interested in designing us a whole new kitchen, not replacing one "box." Two local companies I called were willing to fix me up with a 21" X 42" X 12" upper cabinet box. One wanted three hundred bucks, and one said two hundred if I was willing to wait until they ordered another kitchen. Otherwise, the shipping would be another hundred. I went to Kitchen World, paid for my cabinet, and the waiting began.

The condo two doors down has been undergoing extensive renovations. A scrap of drywall appeared on their back patio one day, I measured it and found that it was just a little too big to be a perfect replacement for the piece torn out by the Dri-guys. I asked if I could have it, and soon had patched part of the gaping hole. Carmen taped a piece of plastic over the soffit hole, and for months that was the best our kitchen looked.

Monday, February 10th, 2020, Linda at Kitchen World called to say that the cabinet was in! we picked it up on Tuesday. Yesterday I installed it. Four months later, the saga finally ended. And I haven't had the courage to flush toilet number three again.

Hear Ye, Hear Ye

My mental health professional assigned homework: "Update your blogs!" so here I am.

This all started, probably in the late sixties, with Jimi Hendrix and Cream. Then in the seventies I worked in loud environments for a few years. In the eighties I was sound man for a ridiculously loud rock band for a while, and then I started working in wood shops with power tools, air compressors, forklifts and vacuum systems roaring all around me. By the turn of the millennium, my high frequency hearing was toast.

In 2010 I got my first hearing aids. They were very uncomfortable and made all noises louder than they needed to be. Turning them on or off involved opening or closing the little tiny battery compartment, a very difficult task with my tremors and arthritis. They were very expensive, so I was hesitant to wear them to work, to walk outdoors unless the weather was perfect (wind made a horrible sound!) or to get sweaty. In short, I rarely wore them. And yet they crapped out in a couple of years. Not a good experience.

Since then there has been steadily increasing lobbying going on to improve my hearing once again. I, of course, hesitated - dug in my heels, you might say - and deferred  any action until a couple of months ago. At that time I received yet another mailing from Miracle Ear, this time with a Free Gift for anyone who comes for a hearing test and consultation. As my co-worker Steve said decades ago, "If it's for free it's for me!" So I went. With Carmen's last words ringing in my ears, "Don't sign anything!" I set out for the bus ride to my appointment with Gary.

Gary put me in the sound proof booth with the headphones and the Jeopardy button and did the testing I've had so many times before - press the button when you hear a tone. Then he drew the graph of my hearing frequencies - good on the low frequencies and off the scale bad on the highs. He pulled out a pair of hearing aids and synced them with his computer, programming my needs into them. Then he put them on me and in me, and suddenly I could hear a whole world of sound I couldn't remember ever hearing before. He took me outside into the parking lot, just fifty feet away from busy San Jose Boulevard, and talked to me in a normal speaking voice. I understood every word. He walked away ten feet and talked. I understood. He went another ten feet. Still I understood him in spite of all the traffic noise. I was duly impressed. We went back inside and he took them off. The world collapsed back to the limited hearing of my unaugmented ears. I nearly cried. But I didn't sign anything. I asked how long the "special price" of only $5700 was good for. Three days. I took my free gift home along with a new appreciation for how far hearing aid technology has come in ten years.

After I recovered from that experience, I went to the AARP website to see what they might recommend. There was an ad for "hear.com" touting affordable hearing aids. How can you go wrong with AARP? So I called them. They set me up an appointment with Randy at Ear To Hear on Hartley Road, also easily accessible by bus. They also set me up for financing, with a 45 day risk-free trial period. Great. I went to see Randy on the day after Christmas. He did another hearing test and drew another graph - I can draw it in my sleep now - and put a pair of Signa hearing aids on me and in me. It was better, but not as good as Miracle Ear by far. He said he was starting me off slowly and would bump up the volume over the next three weeks. I wore them home and walking the dog and working around the house. In three weeks he had stepped up the volume to where it is now, and I'm happy with them. There are no batteries to juggle, and putting them on and off the induction charger turns them off and on. they are comfortable enough that I forget I'm wearing them. And they are only $3500

Next week we are going to an appointment with Costco Hearing Aid Center. Theirs are less expensive than Ear To Hear. We'll see if they make me as happy as my 45 day risk-free trial.

Memory Lane, With A Few Potholes

This morning, in a post on my Facebook timeline, my friend Mary asked me where I went to school in 7th and 8th grades. This kicked off a cascade of memories of that era, and curiosity about why she might have asked.

The 1965-66 school year was a very strange one. My class was near the peak of the baby boom squeezing through the school system. While "they" worked on building the new MacArthur Junior High, my class was shuttled to a block of barracks in Fort Meade, Maryland, headquarters of the second Army. "They" called these barracks MacArthur Junior High  That year was remarkable for a couple of reasons. First, it meant that we were not the newbies coming into Arundel Junior High - which was 0.2 miles from my house. We were the only grade in the barracks, so there were no bigger kids to pick on us. Second, we were out of school for a whole week in February due to the Blizzard of '66, which dumped three feet of snow on us. And third, I developed my first serious crush on the girl sitting in front of me in our primary classroom. When the mean girls got an inkling of my feelings, they told her that I liked her. She whipped around and said "HA!!!" in my face. This was the spark that ignited eleven years of clinical depression.

The 1966-67 school year was in Arundel Junior High. MacArthur was finished, so there was room enough for 7th grade to return to Arundel as well, so my class was not the newbies again. My favorite subject was Physical Science, which kicked off my lifelong love affair with physics. I became pretty close to the teacher, Miss Bell. I often stayed after school to help her tidy up and prepare for the next day. The other side of the coin was Art class. The teacher is the one I thought of when I read about Professor Snape in the Harry Potter books. Several times during the year he took whatever I was working on up to the front of the class to show them an example of what NOT to do. The last time he did that, when he returned my sculpture to me, I grabbed a hammer and a chisel and began pounding it to dust, sobbing uncontrollably all the while. My mother was called, and within a week or so, I was seeing a psychiatrist. A "depressive reaction" was the diagnosis of my art class meltdown.

Ninth grade brought on my second serious crush, this time on an eighth grader whose family were the current occupants of the Army officers' off-base rental house next door to mine.  That goofy obsession dragged on for seven goofy years. Also, I was heavily into photography and photo-processing by then. I became known for taking pictures in school one day, and bringing the prints in to show everyone the next day. I was invited to be a photographer on the yearbook staff at Arundel High the following year. I was also looking forward to being on the Arundel Wildcats football team.  So, at the end of the school year, we went on a 5-week vacation to Vero Beach, Florida, where my mother's mother lived.. After our return to Maryland, my parents decided to move us to Vero Beach, The end of my first incarnation.

Needless to say, I have often wondered about some of the people I went to school with back then, but none have surfaced in over 50 years. Has Mary encountered one of them?

Phoney Baloney

About five years ago, our car got a rock to the windshield and Carmen called an auto glass place to get it replaced. On the appointed day she took the car in to have it done. They pulled the cracked windshield, crushed it and threw it into the dumpster. Only then did they discover that they had ordered the wrong replacement. This, of course, required them to provide alternate transportation until the windshield was replaced.

I told you that story to tell you this one.

Back in August of ought eighteen, Carmen and I were planning our Thanksgiving week getaway to St. Augustine, where we could relax near the beach and see our gaggle of friends that live nearby. In the throes of this planning, it occurred to us that a) we're not getting any younger; b) we have no children to comfort us in our golden years and c) most of our closest friends live in northeast Florida. We began working toward buying a condo in Jacksonville (that's an extreme capsulization of the real range of options we considered before we narrowed them down to a 'condo in Jacksonville') which included a four-day trip down in September to look at properties, and Carmen's quick flight down in October to see in person what finally became our condo.

It came to pass in those days that we closed the deal in mid-November, which prompted us to rent a 12 foot truck in which to carry a load down on the way to our St. Augustine getaway. They didn't have a 12' in stock, so we got a 16' at the same price. We loaded it about half full of stuff we wouldn't need during the months following our return to Nashville. I drove it down here, and we unloaded it ourselves before we went on to our vacay.

By the time our vacay was coming to a close, we began to realize that there were things that needed to be done here after she needed to return to work in Nashville. We decided that I would stay here and show our electrician friend what all needed to be done, greet the painter and explain the job to him so he could work up a quote, install the new internet-connected thermostat, install the new internet-connected security system, and assemble several pieces of  Ikea furniture in my spare time. These things I did, and gladly, before renting a car to drive back to Nashville.

There was, of course, a fly in the ointment, otherwise why would I be writing all of this, right?

The laptop computer I am using now, I only use when I want to write something on a real keyboard, or print something. Otherwise, I use my Kindle Fire. It's smaller, faster, way less cumbersome. I did not bring my laptop on vacation. So after I finished with the electrician, the painter and the thermostat, I pulled out the Ring security system. I found the instruction booklet. Step 1 - plug it in. Done. Step 2 - synch your phone with the system: a) download the Ring app from Google Play. Well, the Kindle Fire will not accept apps from Google Play, period. I know this because I called Amazon tech support and they assured me that this was the case. In addition, the only way to activate the system is to download the Ring app from Google Play. I know this because I called Ring tech support and they assured me that this was the case. They asked if I had a computer other than my Fire. Yes, in Tennessee. That was no help. I puzzled and puzzed 'til my puzzler was sore, and finally came to the conclusion that the cheapest and fastest way to solve this was to buy a $45.00 smart phone. I walked to Walgreen's and then to CVS on a fine Sunday morning, and came home with an LG Phoenix 3 smart-ass phone. I wrangled with AT&T to get my prepaid service going - another $45.00 - and within seconds had downloaded the app. Good to go, at last! And now I had a fancy new 904 area code phone number, and a smarty pants phone like the big kids have! I activated the system, set up all of the sensors, rented a car and drove back to Nashville.

Fast forward to January. Two days after my birthday, I drove a 24' truck packed tight from front to back with most of the rest of our stuff (loaded by professional loaders!) and two kitties in carriers on the seat beside me. On Tuesday the 15th, I became a resident of Jacksonville. Carmen drove down with the dog in her car. Professional unloaders brought everything in, most of it to the right places, and a few days later Carmen went back to Nashville. She is still there as I write this, and we four mammals miss her bunches!

Not long afterward, Carmen had finally had it up to here (picture my hand hovering somewhere around my nose) with her old smart phone. She pow-wowed with the tech folks at her church, and they decided to order two new phones from Google fi, because adding me to her plan cost less than keeping my prepaid AT&T plan. And I could keep my fancy 904 number, which was good because I have given that number as my primary contact number to every entity with which I deal. Days and weeks went by, watching for the phones to be delivered. Finally, the office administrator at her previous church in Pennsylvania called to tell Carmen that a package had arrived for her from Google. What??? Carmen called the internet technology behemoth to straighten things out. There was an old Pennsylvania billing address connected to her account, so their brilliant computers disregarded the shipping address on the order, and sent the phones to Pennsylvania. A whole lot of rigamarole ensued, Pennsylvania shipped the phones to Nashville, and all was once again right with the world. RIGHT!

So another tech pow-wow occurred to set up the new phones. They called me with questions about my AT&T account so they could close it. I, of course, had already prepaid March by then, but these things have to be done when all of the parties are free to do them, so, whatever. I spent hours on the internet (on my Kindle) and on the phone to AT&T, and finally got them all of the info they needed to close that account so that the fancy 904 number could be given to the new phone. Great. But Google, upon realizing their shipping malfunction, had refunded the money paid for the phones. "No problem. Just send back those phones, and order another round." That was the internet technology behemoth's best solution to this situation. "Can't we just keep these and pay for them again?" "No, because those phones have now been reported as 'lost or stolen' and we can't undo that." "You can;t??!!" "No"

So, until the new new phones arrive and are set up, and mine comes to me somehow, my fancy 904 number is in limbo, and I'm back to my $10.00 Tracfone flip phone. And that, my friends is the end of the phoney baloney story for now.

Career Path

Since Carmen and I got married, I have worked one career more consistently than all of the others, and that has been relocating and setting up housekeeping. We were married in September of '86. We moved twice in '87, once in '89, once in '96, once in '05, once in '06, once in '09, once in '010, twice in '015 and now we are in the middle of what we once again hope will be our last move, our fifth interstate move.

Back in the summer, when Carmen was in Florida visiting her gaggle of girlfriends, I was becoming grumpy (well, grumpier than usual) because I had not had an actual vacation since the Alaska trip in '01. Every "vacation" since then had been dealing with my dying brother, helping my aging parents or, dare I say, MOVING! So, I did what I do best: I wrote a letter to Carmen telling her how I felt and asking for some fun time off. So we began planning a Thanksgiving week vacation to St. Augustine Beach, where we could relax with no responsibilities and visit with our friends. We even invited our friend Rose to have Thanksgiving dinner with us.

As time wore on, while we were anticipating our fun getaway, we began to see things in a different light. It occurred to us that pretty much all of our friends are in Florida. We are aging ourselves, and have no children to help us when we need it. It suddenly made sense to think about moving again, this time not for work or school or family reasons, but for us, for our happiness and security. I won't go into the details of the long drawn-out process, but will cut to the quick: we bought a condominium in Mandarin, an area in the southeast corner of Jacksonville. When we went down for our vacation, I drove the first truckload of stuff.  We spent several extra nights in our "new" condo.

This morning, while walking the dog (another career path) I was thinking about all the work ahead of me at this end to get ready to move, and the huge amount of work ahead of me in Jacksonville before Carmen comes down after her 90-day notice is up. Nearly every move has been this way. If nothing else, I have installed ceiling fans and blinds in every place we've owned. The bookcase beside me here is the fourth of six major bookcases I've built in three states. I totally renovated the kitchen here, as well as major upgrades to doors, cabinets, plumbing fixtures, light fixtures and closet systems throughout. Hell, in Meadville, we bought a 3/2 and moved into a 2/1. I started out life in that house by finishing the interiors of the closet and bathroom, framed out and abandoned by the previous owner. And I won't even go into the long list of projects facing me in Mandarin.

If we were thirty years younger, we would be flipping houses and drowning in cash. But we're not. My arthritis, tremors and carpal tunnel are there every step of the way, reminding me of why I retired at 62 and only work on houses in which we live. It's not a career I chose, but it is a career from which I can't seem to retire. But I hope it slacks off some once we're settled in. And I hope to go fishing!

P.S. - Gilbert Emerson Revisited

My previous post came rushing out of me in a frenzy. Since publishing it, I have had a lot of time to think about what I left out of it, which is, of course, a lot. The most important part of his life well lived was his impact on the people around him.

The first huge impact he had was on his brother Jim, who was born paraplegic to a farm family, in which pulling your weight was paramount. Gilbert was my Uncle Jim's best friend to the end of Jim's life. During their childhood together, they figured out ways to include a paraplegic boy in every aspect of their life. Gilbert built transportation devices for getting him around the farm, carried him around the neighborhood on his bike, insisted on including him as plate umpire in baseball games, and helped figure out ways to make it possible for Jim to do his share of chores with some device or gadget they would invent and manufacture. In an early indication of the direction his life would take, Gilbert was the illustrator of the bird books he and Jim produced. Jim wrote the text, Gil drew the pictures. When they got mad at each other, they would each tear up their half of the bird book. Then they'd make up and start over.

During his time in the Navy, Gil was an excellent morale booster. His wacky sense of humor and upbeat attitude were just what was needed during those grim years. He did impressions of the celebrities of the day - such as Jack Benny and Rochester, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. In one instance, he hid behind the radio, which was huge enough to hide behind, and did a long Roosevelt speech which included the story of those brave men in uniform fighting the war from the little town of Vero Beach, Florida. He had them mesmerized for a short time, until he got so specific, even naming names, that they knew it wasn't really FDR. 

After the war, he married Wynifred, and a year later they had their first son, Jack. My dad was a good dad to both of us, even though my mother insisted that he refrain from being affectionate so that we didn't grow up to be sissies. He was always involved in our lives, gave us baths, helped us build things, took us with him when he could. When Jack was in second grade, Gilbert became president of the PTA in Odenton Elementary. He was president when the Supreme Court handed down their decision that segregation was unconstitutional. Gil refused to consider all the mighty protests that were thrown down. He told them that he would cooperate with the decision, and if they didn't like it they could vote him out of office. They didn't.

He and my mother were largely responsible for forming a Cub Scout pack in Odenton. He was Cubmaster for many years, and my mother was a den mother for many more. One really cool thing I remember from the Cub Scout years was a thing he built for ceremonies. When he asked Akela for a sign that He was with them, an arrow suddenly appeared, stuck into a target. In later years, I realized that the arrow was inside the target, spring loaded to pop out suddenly so that it seemed as if it had been shot from beyond. Show biz.

He was always very involved in Boy Scouts. He was Scoutmaster sometimes, Assistant Scoutmaster sometimes, and went camping with us whenever his schedule permitted. My favorite adventure (and his too, I believe) was a week-long canoe trip, 87 miles down the Potomac River, sleeping under the stars on the river banks in the mountains of West Virginia and Maryland. He took a lot of pictures on Kodachrome, and after we got home and rested up, he and I created a slide show with two carousels of slides and a reel-to-reel tape with his narration and music. We presented it several times to Scouting groups in the area that were thinking about doing the same trip. We recommended it highly.

When we moved to Vero Beach, one of the services he tried to market was slide show production. We did several, most notably one for Mel Fisher, the famous seeker of sunken treasure. Is it any wonder, then, that my project for High School Communications class was a very dramatic slide show with music? Or that I was a sound technician in community theatre years before I built sets. But I digress.

One of the first big projects we did in Vero Beach was a bit of show biz. 1969, our first full year living there, was the 50th anniversary of the incorporation of the City of Vero Beach. The Indian River Citrus Bank hired us to build a full-size replica of the front of a 1919 Model T Ford for people to sit in and have their picture taken in front of a street scene of 14th Avenue as it was in 1919. At sixteen, I was in awe of his ability to transform ordinary objects into windshield, headlights, grill and radiator cap, not to mention drawing and painting the street scene. When we were done, the pictures looked for all the world like people were coming down 14th Avenue in a Model T. I was proud.

Gilbert was in business there for about twenty years. We worked together for my three years of high school, and then for nine years before I married Carmen and we moved to St. Cloud. During that time he developed a devoted pool of clients and vendors. The thing I liked best about it, however, was his willingness to take on young people with no experience in graphic art (me being the first) and teach them the business. He preferred people who had no formal art schooling, because he didn't have to deal with the know-it-all attitude. He could teach them what he needed them to know how to do, and they were grateful for it. Most notably, my friend Craig, a brilliant guitar player and singer. His family was always struggling, due to the sketchy opportunities for brilliant musicians in the little city. But I knew that he also could draw. The thing that told me that he was a good candidate for the Gil Emerson School of Art was the fake license plate expiration sticker he put over his expired sticker. I had to get very close to it to see that it was hand drawn. I brought him in in '82, and he stayed with my dad until a year or so after I left in '87. Craig and his family also lived in one of Gil and Wyni's rental properties for nearly twenty years, their longest stay in any one dwelling.

The rental properties were another matter. For one thing, helping him with repairs and maintenance taught me a lot (mostly it taught me to not be a landlord) and for another, it was a platform from which to help people along. Sure, he got screwed now and then, but there's a much longer list of families who are forever grateful to him and my mother for their compassion and flexibility, including Craig's family.  

Then they moved to Smokey Mountain Estates in Blairsville, Georgia. I am truly grateful for the help and support given to both my parents, but mostly my dad, by his neighbors on the mountain. Mary and Darrell just down the hill have been wonderful friends to them, providing companionship, gluten-free beer, dinners out and in their home, and transportation above and beyond. Ted and Ray and Chip and the rest have all been helpful and fun to have around. I personally attended the 70th anniversary party, which provided us a brief respite from a long siege with my mother in the hospital; and the Goodbye Gil party in February, with Gil Emerson wildlife paintings as party favors for the guests to take home. Both parties featured live entertainment, as well as story telling, gifts and good wishes.

And let us not forget Rachel. She married my brother in 1986, divorced him ten years later, but remained the devoted daughter-in-law for as long as my parents lived, which was thirteen years beyond the death of my brother. In 2013, six months after Gil's stroke, she moved from Denver to Blairsville to be there for my parents. Living in their house quickly became impossible with my mother's dementia, but she got an apartment nearby and continued to help them out with whatever they would let her do. It was a great comfort to us to have her there, and to my dad as well. Luckily, she still loves living in Blairsville.

Anyhoo, perhaps you can tell that the biggest impact he had on anybody, was on me. From him I got my patience and calm demeanor, my love of inventing and building interesting things, my facility with sound technology and my  wacky sense of humor. All of those attributes have served me well over the years and decades. And the long history of doing things as a team served us both well as we navigated life together as hospice patient and care giver.

The Wizard of Oz said, "A heart isn't measured by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others." My daddy had a huge heart.

Gilbert H. Emerson: A Life Well Lived

My daddy died on Friday morning at about 7:35am. I was sitting in a chair beside his bed as his ragged breathing became slower and shallower until it finally stopped. It was a very peaceful end to a very well-lived life. We should all be so lucky.

He was born in 1923 in Monmouth, Oregon, third of four children of a wild west drifter turned farmer and a Denver society girl turned farmer's wife. Some of his earliest memories were of their trek across country in 1928, moving a family of six from Oregon to the Eastern Shore of Maryland in a Model A truck. We still have a chunk of petrified wood collected from the Petrified Forest on that trip.

His stories of growing up on their farm, doing chores, building things, killing rats and being best friends with his paraplegic younger brother Jim (from whom I got my name) are well documented in two sources, both of which he wrote while in his eighties: The Big D, an unpublished manuscript describing his childhood during the Great Depression; and Pinetown, a fictional story which was published by Publish America in 2010. Both are full of stories about farm life during that period of time and in that place, including a richly detailed account of the operation of a steam powered wheat harvester. Their way of life influenced his way of life on into the twenty-first century: don't buy it if you can make it; use it until it wears out beyond usefulness; waste nothing, throw away nothing. We dealt with this until the very end.

After Gilbert graduated high school, his father tried to hand the farm over to him. He declined. He worked in a tomato canning plant, a button factory and then Glenn L. Martin's airplane factory in Baltimore at the beginning of World War II. His experience there no doubt influenced the Navy's decision to send him to airplane mechanic school before stationing him at Vero Beach Naval Air Station in Florida. He was an engine change mechanic there for the duration of the war, although they all expected to be shipped out to more exciting duty at any moment. They were the lost patrol, forgotten by the Navy bigwigs to the end. One guy was born and raised in Vero, and joined the Navy to see the world. Damn!

The best thing about Vero Beach, however was this beautiful young woman who volunteered as a coast watcher (the Japanese never attacked Vero Beach!) and at the Ship's Service Club, a community-sponsored recreation place for the sailors. Gilbert and Wynifred hit it off pretty well, though their marriage only lasted seventy years and one day, until death did them part.

They married in April of 1946, right after his discharge from the Navy, and drove from Vero Beach to the Eastern Shore of Maryland to introduce her to his family. Then they took up residence in the southern outskirts of Baltimore while Gilbert worked and went to art school. Like me, his first job was at Montgomery Ward. Unlike me, he worked in the warehouse. His first illustration job was with the Baltimore City Planning Commission. From there he moved on up to the Maryland State Roads Commission. Then he got a great gig close to the first house they owned, built from a Sears & Roebuck kit by him and his brother Bob on the lot next to brother Bob's place in Odenton, Maryland. He worked at Westinghouse Armaments Division five miles down the road, illustrating bombs, rockets, torpedoes and the like for sales materials to be shown to the military. He taught himself to airbrush over a weekend before starting that job.

We found out last month, during one of his marathon story telling sessions in our living room, that my mother badgered him into applying for the illustrator job at National Geographic. He was perfectly content to meander five miles through the countryside to Westinghouse every morning. Driving thirty five miles into the heart of Washington D.C. did not hold the same appeal, even if the prospect of working for a magazine like National G. was about as cool as it gets. But he got the job, and stayed for thirteen years. For a few years he took the train in, but as his responsibilities grew, he needed to have the flexibility of driving a car in.

In 1968, as the country reeled from the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, Gil and Wyni decided to get crazy and move to Vero Beach, where her mother still lived, and try to make a living as a free-lance commercial artist. I went into tenth grade at Vero Beach High School, while my dad worked at convincing Vero that they needed a free-lance commercial artist. Success was limited, but their shared ability to stretch whatever money came in served them well. I worked in the biz part time, and often made more money than they did.

During the 70s, after I graduated High School and went to live in Maryland, they supplemented their meager income by working real jobs. My mother worked at the library, and my dad at the VB City Planning Commission. In his free time, he threw himself into his lifelong passion for painting wildlife, and on weekends set up a booth at art shows all over Florida. Also, they bought a couple of duplexes for rental properties.

Then in the spring of 1978, I returned to Vero, and my dad and I decided to really make a go of Emerson Art Service. He bought a copy camera, we built a big darkroom for it, and we set out to conquer Vero Beach. The huge break came in the latter months of 1979. The Dodgers, who did their Spring Training at what used to be the Vero Beach Naval Air Station, were planning to start a minor league team playing in the Florida State League. They needed someone to do their programs, pocket schedules, posters and newspaper advertising. They inquired at every print shop and publication they could find. Every single one told them that Gil Emerson was the man they should deal with. After the sixth or seventh time, they surrendered, and we became graphic artists to the Dodgers. We had, by that time, several other accounts that gave us a modicum of work, but the Dodgers were our bread and butter.

Then in 1986, at the ripe old age of sixty three, Dad decided to hand the business over to me. I declined. My new wife and I moved to St. Cloud, Florida, about a hundred miles from Vero, and my dad sold the business to one of our competitors. They bought a small used motor home, and began searching the Carolinas and Georgia for a place to spend their summers away from the oppressive heat and hurricanes. Finally, in 1995, they bought a lot in the mountains of North Georgia, paid a contractor to build the foundation, outside walls, roof, sub-floors and stairs between the three floors, with enough framing inside to hold it together. A plumber plumbed the kitchen and two bathrooms, and an electrician wired the whole house, with my dad as his helper. From then until he came to live with us in Nashville, my dad worked at finishing the "cabin." It was his last great work of art.

The last three months of his life were very special to Carmen and me. We delighted in listening to his stories, we found joy in helping him with things that once were easy for him. We fixed food for him, and in the last days even spoon fed him. All the while, he was grateful to be with us instead of in a nursing home, and even was tender and loving sometimes - something he rarely was before then. We took him in knowing he would die soon, and we all made the most of our final three months together. The last week saw a sharp decline in his strength and his mental alertness. He stopped eating, couldn't produce anything on the toilet - try as he might, and several times said "Why can't I just die?!" He refused the comfort medicines provided by Hospice until Thursday night. Friday morning he was totally unfocused, confused and agitated. We gave him some medicine, he calmed down, closed his eyes and gradually stopped breathing. It was a very peaceful end with me sitting beside him. We should all be so lucky.