Cima Gallina: Gone But Not Forgotten: Part 3

My time in Italy could have been so much more than it was.  I have mentioned time and time again how I had missed so many golden opportunities.  Northern Italy is in such a centrally-located spot I could have gone to France, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Austria, Germany, Croatia, and so many other places!  I did have adventures though.

The great Pisa adventure, aka "The time I went to Pisa but forgot to see the leaning tower" was my greatest folly.  A couple of months into my tour there a management change took place.  Joe Woolfolk left, and Tommy Lawson replaced him.  Tommy was a good ol' boy "from the hills of north Georgia" as he liked to say.  He had enough stature within the Air Force to be able to have his own car shipped over from the states, and after he had been there for a month or so was notified that it was ready for pickup down south in the port city of Pisa.  At that time there was a middle-aged single guy named Andy working with us, there on loan from Aviano Air Base because we were low on personnel.  He offered to let us drive his brand new Triumph TR7 down to Pisa to get Tommy's car.  We switched back and forth a few times during the several-hour trip, and both of us were amazed at how much power it had and how crazy-quick the steering was.  When we stopped for gas we even had to pop the hood to satisfy our curiosity as to how many cylinders the engine had.  When we got to Pisa and went to get his car I was surprised to see what it was:  A red Plymouth Scamp.  Although it was a plain-jane, ordinary car, it was apparently just sleeping.  When he got behind the wheel he became Tommy Lawson: moonshine runner.  The race was on.  It was a cat & mouse chase right off the bat.  He was feeling so pumped to be behind the wheel of his car he was really pushing it.  It was all I could do to stay within range of him, and that's considering I'm also a pretty good driver and I was driving a sports car!  I remember at one point as I went flying into the middle of a small town the townspeople on the sidewalks were all craning their necks in the direction Tommy had gone.  The instant they heard me their heads all snapped my direction.  When we finally stopped for gas halfway home it occurred to us what we had--or hadn't--done.  We were having so much fun we forgot about one of the biggest tourist attractions in Italy.  We forgot to see the Leaning Tower of Pisa!

The people in our area were very, very friendly.  One time, Tommy, myself, and Elaine were all sitting in the bar at The Maier and talking with one of the locals.  (I'm going to spell his name like it was pronounced because I have no idea what it actually was.)  Ottie was a rotund little fellow that always wore a traditional green cap with a feather in it that you see at Oktoberfest events.  He was the epitome of the stereotypical Bavarian, from the belly to the rosy cheeks and mustache and  the way he always dressed.  His English was about 10% and our German was about the same.  We all conversed by pantomime, pictures, and anything else we could think of to get points across.  I don't know how it all transpired this one particular day, but somehow we all ended up being invited to Ottie's home partway up one of the surrounding mountains.  It was very, cozy and small.  The center of the place was where the hearth stood, and the beds, kitchen, and everything else were all built centered around it.  I'm sure his wife had no idea he was going to bring someone "home for dinner", but if she was annoyed she certainly didn't show it.  We sat there laughing and having a great time, drinking wine and eating homemade bread, homemade butter, and homemade cheese.  It was one of the best times I had during my year there.  They opened their home to us and shared their bounty.  The food, as simple as it was, remains one of my most cherished memories of Italy.

Near the end of my time there I learned of a special tourist event that was coming up.  I believe it was December.  I just know there was plenty of snow by that time, and snow played a very important part in this story.  When I first heard about it, I wasn't able to learn much about it other than the fact that it was a sledding adventure.  It was the kind of thing where they sold tickets beforehand, so there were limited spaces available.  Why not?  It was being pretty highly endorsed by those that knew anything about it.  It was apparently a pretty big thing with the tourist crowd.  For the life of me, I can't be 100% sure about who was with me, but I believe it was Tommy, the site commander.  He and I were together on many experiences.  This particular adventure was a two-person thing so we needed to sign two of us up.  Here's what went down.  A big, luxury charter bus picked us up and transported us to a gasthof somewhere.  I say somewhere because it was dark and we had no idea really where we were.  The bus was full though, so we had plenty of people, and when we stopped we all tumbled out and descended on the poor staff of the gasthof like a swarm of thirsty bees.  We all drank for a while--I'm thinking at least a couple of beers worth if not more--when they announced "back to the bus" and herded us back outside.  It was pitch dark out, and the bus drove us for a good half hour or so up a curvy mountain road that led up from the place we had stopped at.  At the end of our drive, what should be there but another gasthof!  Laughing and having a good time, everyone got off the bus and went into that establishment and we repeated what we had done down at the bottom of the mountain road at the previous

place.  After a while the call was given just like before.  The cry, "Okay, everyone out" was issued in multiple languages.  By this time most everyone was pretty well lit and feeling no pain.  We all put our winter gear on and went over to the bus.  The staff issued one sled for every two people.  I use the term sled loosely.  The Bavarian version of a sled we were going to be using was unlike anything I had ever seen.  It was tall in height, it was short in length, and it had no steering.  There are probably several varieties of sleds in that area of the world, but our adventure used the drunk tourist model.  After sleds were doled out, the bus left and went back to the bottom.  Now the fun began.  First of all, we had to learn how to fit ourselves onto the teeny sled.  Not that difficult... just hook your feet onto the runners.  Little by little people were launching down the dark mountain road amid whoops, hollering, cursing, and laughter--in multiple languages.  We got going down the road with no problem.  The sled worked pretty well!  That is, until we came to the first curve.  We went straight into the snow bank, as did most people.  Little by little, after multiple run-ins with snow banks, we learned that all we had to do was dip a toe here and there so it drug in the snow without even removing our foot from the runner.  It was very, very dark out there.  I know that because usually when you're outdoors at night you get used to it and start to be able to see by starlight or whatever.  There was no starlight.  You know how sometimes you can see better when you turn your head slightly and look out of the corner of your eye?  It was that dark.  We never saw the snow banks or turns until it was almost too late.  Luckily there was a bank of snow on both sides of the road, and the road was closed to vehicles for the event.  It was crazy.  I remember at one point hearing someone laughing and swearing in English.  I hollered at them and found out they were from Canada.  The road had to have been several miles long, so it took quite a while.  We did eventually make it to the bottom.  Lucky for us, there was our friendly gasthof with our tourist bus parked outside.  More drinks and the blazing fire in their giant fireplace was the perfect end to our adventure.

What prompted me to lapse into this blog trilogy?  I was surfing the web one morning and ran across the end of Cima Gallina. (There are a few pictures there to go with the story.) Yes, sadly, it is no more. In this day of internet and satellite communications shooting from dish antenna to dish antenna across the miles just wasn't feasible any longer.  If you'd like to see a nice assortment of pictures of various people's shots of Cima Gallina, click here for a Google image search.

It was, without fail, the most amazing place I was stationed during my short, 6-year career in the Air Force.  It was a place that people only dream of visiting, let alone actually being able to live there for a solid year.  It was a place with a lot of great memories, only a few of which I have shared.  It was while I was stationed there that my son Mark was conceived.  It was a special part of my past.

R.I.P. Cima Gallina.

Cima Gallina: Gone But Not Forgotten: Part 2

Welcome to part 2 as I related some of my fond memories of northern Italy to you.  The more I type, the more things unfold in my mind.  I guess I won't know how many parts this series has until I'm finally finished and sit back in my chair, exhausted.

A month or so after I arrived I found an a apartment in the next town south, called Vipiteno (or Sterzing if your preferred German).  Vipiteno was a little bigger than Colle Isarco, and wasn't as confined by the mountains.  I didn't have a car, so my transportation consisted of riding the train between the two towns most of the time.  Trains are the way to go when you live in Europe.  It seems like they join all the towns together no matter how small and insignificant they might seem.  They were cheap too.  I think I paid the equivalent of like $1.20 to ride the train between Vipiteno and Colle Isarco.  They were beautiful trains too--all polished wood inside.  I had a 10-speed bicycle that I had shipped with my possessions when I left Turkey, and I would ride that around town, and occasionally (weather permitting) ride that between home and Colle Isarco.

Not long after I arrived, another new guy, Kevin, showed up.  He was married at the time and not long after his arrival his wife, Elaine, showed up.  We were not "authorized" to have spouses with us there, which meant the Air Force wouldn't pay their way, so if you wanted your significant other with you it was on your dime.  Kevin and Elaine decided she was going to be there with him during his year (as most couples with no kids probably would).  After all, it was quite the opportunity... Kind of a "two for one" deal to have you and your wife live there.  Kevin and I ended up on opposite shifts, so Elaine was almost always with Tommy (our site commander) and I when we were out and about.

In a very short time I (we?) developed a favorite restaurant:  The Maier (now apparently called the Maier Moar).  It was owned by a young couple named Franz and Krista, and had a sharp-tongued barmaid/waitress named Waltroud (pronounced Valtrout).  What made The Maier my favorite place was the food.  Franz had interned several years of his adolescence under the tutelage of a chef somewhere in Europe   He knew what to do with food and how best to do it. He even made the most ordinary items like pommes frites or a sandwich taste amazing.  My favorite:  Steak Madagascar.  It was a cut of some sort of a beef medallion about an inch thick that you almost cut with the edge of your fork.  It had a strip of bacon around it and it was smothered in some sort of amazing sauce laden with capers and peppercorns.  The rest of the plate was a pile of pommes frites.  I think the whole platter was only about 5 bucks.   He also had--bar none--the best Weiner Schnitzel I had ever eaten.  He would start with a piece of veal that was probably 4 inches across and pound it so flat it was only 1/4" thick and hung out over the edge of the large plate.  And so tender!   It was under 5 bucks.  Mmmm...That was my favorite meal.

One night I was at the Maier all evening celebrating my birthday ("you must have Schnapps!" said Krista, over and over) and got on my bicycle for the ride home.  It was mostly downhill, it was all curvy roads, it was all dark, and I was going fast.  At one point I saw headlights coming from behind and I heard a quick 'beep, beep' as a car came around me.  I hugged the right side of the road and stole a quick glance over my left shoulder as the car went by me.  I turned my head back just in time to see a plastic road reflector post that was on the right edge of the road whiz by me on my left.  I was able to clamp hard on the brakes momentarily before I left the road and went airborne.  I came down hard.  I bent the frame, broke my glasses, and was seriously amazed I didn't break anything else (I did a "face plant" into the ground and I wore no helmet).  After quite a while of searching on my hands and knees I finally located what was left of my glasses.  I was able to ride the bicycle home after I wrenched the front wheel around backwards, but it was ruined.  When I got home and saw the damage to my face, I turned on the shower and sat down under it.  I awoke some time later when the water--still raining on me--had run out of warmth and had turned cool.  I had to go up the mountain to work the next morning, and I stopped by The Maier on the way to share my experience with Krista.  When she saw me the color drained from her face.  She blamed herself for goading me, but no--it was all my doing.  After all, what kind of an idiot rides a bicycle on dark mountain roads when they're drunk?  Apparently this idiot, that's who!

Our group tried to maintain radio communication with each other all the time.  In addition to the base station that was up on the mountain in the site commander's office, there were two "portable" radios that we had to carry around while we were down at the bottom.  One of them was always in the boss' possession and the other was whoever was off-duty and given the task of radio responsibility.  The reason I put the word portable in quotation marks was because by today's standards they were monsters.  I wasn't able to find a picture of one anywhere on the web, but I did find a glimpse of one in a picture I took inside my apartment.  They were heavy (probably mostly battery weight) and had a handle across the top to carry them like a suitcase.  They were a far cry from what we're used to nowadays!

Our small Detachment did have a vehicle issued to us.  It was for official business only, but we had determined that pretty much everything was official business.  It was a 1971 (I think) Dodge pickup.  It was traditional military olive drab in color, and stood out like a sore thumb.  We kept it parked at the far edge of the city park parking lot when we weren't using it.  Negotiating the narrow roads of Europe in a US-made full size truck was sometimes not so easy.  It was not unlike a full size HumVee on our roads.  They barely fit.  The nearest place we could shop for food and other goods at a US installation was Garmisch, Germany, but because Austria was a neutral country we couldn't traverse the small panhandle of their land with our military truck to get there.  Instead, our only option was Verona, Italy, the birthplace of Shakespeare.  It was an army base to the south of us, and it was still quite a drive even though it was much closer than the nearest Air Force base.  We made the 3-hour (each way) trip every couple of weeks for one shopping reason or another--usually food shopping. To enable us to make the round trip in one day we drove fast.  Our Dodge pickup routinely went the whole distance on the Autostrade at a nice, easy 100 miles an hour.  Seriously.  (Actually, after awhile it seems like you're only going about 50.)  The Autostrade is Italy's end of the German Autobahn highway.  It's basically like our freeways.  Although the truck seemed to love going 100 all day, its tires didn't.  We routinely had whole belts (the Air Force apparently only bought retreads then) of tread fly off the tires during our runs.  We carried two spares in the back because of that.  One time I was humming along at 100-105 in the slow lane and WHOOSH--a red Ferrari passed me like I was hardly moving.  I only barely identified it by it's taillights before it disappeared.  One time we had exhausted our supply of tires and I had to drive to Aviano for new ones.  On the way--wouldn't you know it--another one let go (they make a pretty loud BRAAPP noise when it happens at that speed!).  With no spare to change to, I had no choice but to slow down and drive somewhat normal.  I wasn't too worried about it because when it happened they never lost air--only the tread off the tire.  When I drove into the base motor pool, the guy asked, "Holy crap, how fast are you driving this thing anyway?"

Our mail didn't come directly to us because we had no actual address.  Instead, we had to drive about a half hour to the south to an Army post near the town of Bressanone to get it.  I don't remember how often mail came but I think it was pretty much up to us to decide how often we wanted to drive to there to get the all the mail for our group.  One time me and Tommy were sitting at the bar in the Maier (feeling no pain) when he suddenly exclaimed, "Let's go to Bressanone to get the mail."  Sounded good to me.  We both went across the street and into the city park where our truck was parked and hopped in.  Let me say this, he was no slouch at driving.  He had apparently had a lot of back roads driving experience in Georgia.  Several miles later as he was casually executing a perfect 4-wheel drift (a controlled slide) through a corner he looks over at me and says, "If I ever catch you driving like this I'll hang yer ass."  I laughed as I hung on.  He made it look effortless.  He was just leaning against the door, steering one-handed.

I found myself lusting after a camera not long after I arrived. A real camera. I was tired of the little Kodak 110 Instamatic camera I had been using.  One of my shopping trips to the Army base at Verona sent me home with a beautiful Nikon FM camera body (they were out of stock on the lens I wanted). A week later I was able to complete my purchase by adding a 50mm 1.4 lens to the mix. I loved taking pictures as I traveled up and down the mountain! It seemed like something was different every single time. It might be snowy, foggy, sunset, green of spring/summer--any number of differences. In retrospect, it was weird seeing shots from the same vantage point during so many different times of the year. I have pictures that are virtually identical to each other, taken in all seasons of the year! I took a lot of pictures for a film user (nowadays it's different with digital of course--no limits). I used Kodak mailers so I just sent my rolls of film in to be developed and got slides back. I still have the same slide projector I bought back then in 1977, and it still has the same bulb in it. It's projecting my images on the same portable screen too.

The army base at Verona was pretty big, and it had all the conveniences.  We carried an ice chest for our cold foods, and shopped for whatever we needed.  The Audio-Video Club at Verona was the store that sold everything stereo and photography.  I think I visited that store every time I went down there.  It became my new friend on shopping visits.  I bought my beloved Nikon FM camera, a ghetto blaster for my apartment, and some stereo gear.  I set my lofty sights on outfitting myself with top of the line stereo gear during that time.  I figured I'd start with the most expensive items:  The speakers.  Twice I bought a pair of Infinity Quantum 3 speakers and had them drop-shipped home.  They are 110 lbs apiece and showed up at my parents' house strapped to a pallet, leaving my dad to figure out how to move them or where to store them (I found that part out later).  With four speakers bought (to the tune of over $1700) I went next for a top of the line Thorens turntable.  The funny thing is, that was the end of the story. I never bought the preamp or amplifier or tuner that I had my sights on, or any other piece of my dream stereo system.  I ended up saving money for this or that but never bought another piece of stereo equipment.  Basically, I ended up with giant speakers and a beautiful turntable, but nothing to go between them.  What a dummy.


Stay tuned for more!

Cima Gallina: Gone But Not Forgotten: Part 1

It's about time I told my (few) readers another story. Yes, another of the amazingly-interesting stories that have shaped me into the patchwork human you see before you. Are you intrigued yet? I'm going to tell you about the place I used to live in northern Italy.

I was single in the Air Force, so whenever I got orders to relocate I was excited. I had no family disruption to be concerned with. No kids leaving school or spouse that had to leave her job. Most of my belongings fit into a few boxes. When I got orders to move it was like tearing open a clue on The Amazing Race. What will I get? Where will I go? In the field of electronics that I was in, most assignments outside of the US were remote locations of some kind, like mountaintops. At this particular time I was kind of hoping for a stateside assignment. I had already been in exile in a remote part of Turkey (Malatya) for almost a year, and I was missing the freedoms of the US. There were 28 of us living and working there, and most of them hated every minute of it. Although I was fine with the place I was still ready to leave. A year is enough. When I got my assignment to Italy, I was kind of divided on it. I was disappointed to not go back to the states, but yet I was interested in going to such an strangely unknown assignment. Even though I was among people that had been in that same field of communications for many years, they hadn't even heard of this place I was headed. That just added to the interest. Especially when I read what my "sponsor" had written to me about the place.  The name of the site was Cima (pronounced cheema) Gallina.

[It's easy to look back on it and romance it in my mind. Oh, to relive that time and place and re-experience it with my current values and interests! I would do so many things different. But back to the story...]

After spending almost a month on leave at home, I flew commercial all the way to Aviano Air Base (near Venice). I was picked up by two of my new coworkers, Joe and Frank ("don't call me Francis!). One of the two was my appointed sponsor--the one that had written me the required "what to expect at your new assignment" letter. We did the back and forth Q&A all the way there, and because the drive to my new home was over three hours long, there was a lot we covered. Here are some of the more interesting facts--things that made it unique to any other place I had ever heard of:

• There was a whopping total of 5 of us there.
• We wore no uniforms of any kind. We wore all civilian clothing (to help blend in among locals and tourists), but we still had to maintain our military grooming and appearance standards.
• The mountaintop site was only accessible by chairlift. It took 45 minutes total, and used two chairlifts.
• The work schedule was 4 days on, 4 days off. During our "on" time, we actually lived up there.
• There were no military facilities down below, so we lived in apartments or wherever we wanted. Uncle Sam paid us handsomely to do so.
• We were about 10 miles from the border of Austria. Because Austria is a neutral country, US military installations were not permitted on it. Our site was the northernmost tip of Italy, and was a "repeater" link that shot over Austria to a site in Germany.
• It was a dual-language area. While the people spoke both Italian and German, it was once part of Bavaria, so the architecture, culture, and the language was predominately German.

I believe it was January when I got there--the thick of winter. It was a European skiing paradise, and it was the peak of their tourism season. The town was bustling. The sights, the smells, and the feeling in the air was so different from anything I had ever experienced! The streets were narrow and snow was so high that you had to step down into many of the shops and restaurants. Every business had puddles and wet footprints leading from the entrance door. The bars and restaurants were my favorite places. The warmth of the wood fires in their fireplaces, the laughter, the happy voices speaking all sorts of different languages, the clinking of glassware, and the fantastic smells that wafted throughout the places just drew me in. There was a high level of human warmth in those places. Even though I was a stranger I felt welcome. There was just something about being in that environment that overwhelmed me. Looking out the window to the snowy views of tourist life--I kept thinking I can't believe where I am sitting!

Welcome!

It was an interesting thing being in a dual-language place. Everywhere I looked there were signs printed in Italian and German. All the towns themselves even had two names. That beautiful tourist-filled shangri-la town I found myself in there at the base of the mountains was called Colle Isarco if you were Italian, and Gossensass if you spoke German. The mountain that we called Cima Gallina was called Hubnerspiel in German.  There were no apartments available when I first arrived, and for a week I had a room at the Sport Hotel. It was on the second floor and the balcony opened out to the street I enjoyed going outside onto the snow-covered balcony where I loved to drink in the sights and sounds of the unique little town. After a week or so I got myself a more permanent abode. Believe it or not, it was an apartment-like room in the basement of a same hotel! I got the impression it was originally there for a cook or chef or something because my room door was right across from the kitchen. It was bigger than the regular hotel rooms, and it also had a bigger, more apartment-like bathroom in it. I remember sneaking into the closed kitchen late at night on occasion to scavenge leftover pommes frites.

After I arrived I had a couple days before I was scheduled to go up onto the mountain for my first shift. That was fantastic because I got to explore my new surroundings! Being somewhat unprepared, I needed some additional clothing. I took a good look at what everyone was wearing, and with some advice from one of my new coworkers, I went shopping. Naturally, clothing stores in small, tourist places are going to be expensive, but the good thing is, they had exactly what I needed. I bought a nice, lightweight (but extremely warm) ski jacket, and a pair of puffy moon boots. I had never seen moon boots before, and the US still hadn't "discovered" them, but around there everyone was wearing them. Some were even covered with long hair (which is probably where George Lucas got the Chewbacca look). When I first put my feet into them I could not believe how warm, cushy, and comfortable they were. I wore them probably half the year I was there. They proved to be an indispensable asset.

Looking down on Colle Isarco

There are no skiers in my family, so I had never ridden a chairlift before. When I was led up to the bottom of it for my first ride to my new job I didn't really know what to expect. After some quick instruction, I watched for a couple minutes as other people (skiers of course) went ahead. When I felt I was ready I stepped forward and was scooped up by an empty chair and bounced gently as it carried me upward. That ride was one of the most profound experiences of my life! I was mesmerized as the ground fell away from me and I slowly left the sounds of the small town behind. As I rose in the gray, snowy sky, I had an overwhelming feeling of solitude. When it's snowing everything seems quieter, and that just added to it. I sat, cocooned on my chair, and took it all in--occasionally craning my head around to watch the town receding from view behind me. Just above the town I sailed slowly over the Autostrade, the major highway between Italy and Austria that cuts through Brenner Pass. There was a platform above the highway so nothing could accidentally be dropped onto cars and trucks below. I remember having a strange feeling of being vulnerable when I went over that highway.  I couldn't resist waving at the traffic though, and was I greeted in return by horns honking from them as they passed below.

Getting higher

As I left that highway behind, I floated over someone's private property, then came to the lower part of the actual ski area. There I saw a rope-tow to the right that took the skiers back up to where the chair lift ended. I watched as skiers of all sizes enjoyed themselves below. In some areas my chair was only about 20 feet off the ground so I was right in the middle of it all. Shrieks, laughter, and all sorts of people sounds assailed me as I floated silently above them, taking it all in. When I got to the end of the lift there were skiers all around, so I was glad I was able to dismount without making an idiot of myself. The second half of my journey was still ahead of me. I looked up the mountain at the lonely ski lift that stood silent and unmoving. It's single chairs swayed gently in the wind, stretching up the barren mountain and disappearing into a grayish-white distance. The operator started up the lift and I got on. This one was different. It was more lonely. There were no trees, no other riders, and nothing much to look at but the naked, empty chairs coming down on my left. There was no sound but the occasional bumpety-bumpety-bump my chair made as it rolled over the towers that held me off the ground. Unlike the lower, public portion where all the skiers were, this one consisted of much higher towers.  It made the whole experience both scary and exciting. There was not much to see the rest of the trip, and after a fairly long, cold ride I was relieved to see my destination come into view.

Cold and quiet

Lonely at the top

There wasn't much up there at the top of Cima Gallina. Besides the open-ended enclosure that made up the end of the chairlift, there was one windowless building next to it, surrounded by an assortment of communication antennas and a small power structure of some kind. I waited for my coworker (who was on the chair behind me) to get there and he called the lift shack below to verify nobody else was on the lift behind us before turning it off from the top. They controlled power-up from the bottom when we needed to come down. After ringing the doorbell, we were let in and I met our site commander and the two guys that we would be relieving that day. The site consisted of the commander's office (desk, typewriter, phone, file cabinet), small kitchen/dining room/living room, one bedroom with a bunk bed, a bathroom, and the radio equipment room. I found out that even though we had a shower we didn't use it. Why? There was no water up there unless we provided it! There was an ingenious little device that someone had made when they built the place they called the snow melter (for obvious reasons). It consisted of a horizontal 4x8-foot sheet of corrugated aluminum built over some sort of a frame that had a couple of heating coils and a water collection system under it. Every now and then one of us had to go out and shovel some snow onto the snow melter, and that provided enough water to run the toilet and wash hands and dishes. It gave us the excuse to go outside every now and then. I found out that the site commander was the only one that rode up and down daily--the rest of us worked 4 on-4 off.  Air was very, very thin up there.  I don't know what the elevation was, but the air was thin and dry.  Nosebleeds were common, and you can imagine what your nose was like when you woke up in the morning.  Uncle Sam took care of the small sites the best they could, and there was a constant circuit of movies that made the rounds--all 16mm reels.  We got pretty good at threading and running movies.  When the weeks worth of new movies showed up it was hard to keep from having a movie marathon because there was little else to do.  One time I remember watching a movie called Joyride.  (A crappy "B" movie that featured children of famous actors.)  Anyway, the camera was up and outside the car looking through the windshield as they were talking and driving.  Something caught my eye.  "That looks familiar," I told my coworker.  "Yeah, right." he mumbled.  Just then, a small, green sign that said "Auburn" with an arrow on it went by.  "Hey!" I jumped up and rolled it back and replayed it.  Yep, it was obvious:  They were going north on West Valley Highway and had just went past the sign at the end of west Main Street.  "That's home!  That's my town!" I shouted.  Imagine--sitting on a remote mountaintop in Italy and seeing the sign from your home town go by in a movie.  Pretty weird.

In the clouds on a swinging chair

The ride up and down the mountain was made many, many times during the year I was there. My favorite direction, of course, was down. Partly because I was leaving the confines of work, but mostly because I was facing down. I got to drink in the world below me as it unfolded quietly in slow motion. I got to look across the valleys and the craggy mountains that were part of what was called the Dolomites of Sudtirol. It was a visual feast riding down that chairlift, and I was a captive audience.

Getting on the lift at the top

More to come!

Black Bart: Part 2

First of all, read the previous post if you haven't already.  It introduces you to Black Bart and chronicles my drive to Oklahoma City.

Unfortunately, due to my neglect and recklessness, Oklahoma City turned out to be Black Bart final resting place.

Like many people that join the military, I was feeling my oats and I was aching to get out on my own.  I was tired of being under the rule of my parents.  I longed for the day when I could do anything I wanted to do with no grow ups watching over me.  I was longing for some 'get into trouble' time I guess. You know--teenage boy time.  Sometimes I'm surprised I survived.

It seems like I have had always gotten into trouble with cars.  In my first two years of driving I got stopped by police quite often.  I never seemed to get a ticket though.  It may have had a little to do with the size of the town, or maybe it was because whichever cop that pulled me over happened to know my dad.  I don't know.  My job at Karl's Chevron in Auburn may have helped too because they had the contract to service the Auburn police cars.  Whatever the reason, that luck didn't follow me when I left town.  Within the first month of my arrival at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City I had gotten one ticket for speeding and one for reckless driving--both on base.  Those two tickets totaled 9 points, putting me 3 points over the line and placing me into mandatory remedial driving class.  The reckless driving ticket was kind of funny really because I got it while stopped.  I was cruising through a housing area on base (20 mph speed limit) and for whatever reason a little puddle of water in an intersection caught my eye.  I must have been really bored.  I stopped with my rear tires in it and started doing a power-brake burnout.  The tires had just started smoking good when I heard woop woop.  I looked in the rear-view mirror and there was a cop--sitting right behind me with his lights on.  I was busted at that point, so I just let off the brake and finished the burnout, rolling to a stop a little ways ahead.  I must have been a pretty oblivious kid back then.  He was probably behind me the whole time.

There is something about driving that always clicked with me. I have always been one of those guys that, when behind the wheel of a car, almost had a sort of symbiosis with it.  When I am driving a car, it's like I feel the car. I notice the way it feels when I corner or brake or accelerate.  I feel the little things about the road surface and the car both.  Some of the moves I make tend to seem reckless to other people.  When I was younger my driving skills were constantly being tweaked and improved. I wasn't content to take a corner fast and call it good--I wanted to know how fast I could take the corner.  I wanted to know my limits, and I wanted to know my car's limits.  I was learning laws of physics (inertia, momentum, gravity, etc) by the seat of my pants.  Trial and error.  I had my share of spin outs and other boo-boos but they just added to my experience.  I like to think I might have had enough ability to have been good at racing, but I know I lacked the focus and determination that such a thing requires.  Oh, and money--there was none of that either.  I was in it for fun.  Most of what I learned about aggressive driving was learned while driving Black Bart.

The car was powerful, it was fast, and for a big car handled great. After all, it was a cop car, right? Sure, it didn't handle as well as something newer and designed for handling would have, but I think it's safe to say that it probably handled better than most cars did in its 1961 model year. It was a cop car. It had to.  I learned to do 4-wheel drifts through corners. I learned how to do a reverse turn (when you go fast backward and spin the car around without stopping).  Black Bart taught me how to steer with the gas pedal.  I pushed the car far enough into (and past) its limitations that I learned what I could and could not get away with. I did things with that car that many young men (okay--boys) only dream of doing. Many of the things I did were not very conducive to keeping the car healthy either. Slightly airborne while racing on dirt roads for instance.  (By the way, the picture above shows the left rear damage that was caused when I lost the wheel on the freeway in Part 1.)  I managed to blow yet another rear end out of it during my time in Oklahoma, but that might have more to do with the first replacement being an unknown junkyard item.

I didn't have a huge circle of friends there at Tinker Air Force Base, but the ones I did have were pretty good ones. Not many were good drivers though. Tom had a white 65 Mustang. It was a quick enough car all right, but Tom was no driver. He eventually ended up buying a screaming fast Plymouth Duster and sold his Mustang to me, but that's another story.  Wendell had a 67 Corvair with a 327 V8 in the back seat. While it was seriously fast (it hardly weighed anything), it was fraught with problems and treated a little more respectfully. In other words, it was not a "daily driver".  I believe it was Wendell who first coined the name 'Black Bart'.  There were plenty of guys with fast cars but not many that really put them through the paces like I did. The only one of my friends that ever gave me any serious competition was Ken Shelly in his 68 Pontiac GTO. He had a lot more muscle in his car than I did, but my low-slung cop car could easily out-maneuver him. He was also a good driver.

Some of my fondest experiences where playing "cat & mouse" with friends. All it took was for someone to decide (for whatever reason) that we were collectively going somewhere else. It didn't matter where we currently were or where we were going--we just loved to turn it into a competition.  It was one of those 'last one is a rotten egg' things. You know, "Race ya!" To the cars we'd run. Most times there were at least two of us in each car. That's just the way things always seemed to be.  I remember one time when I was getting off a highway cloverleaf, going from the upper roadway down to the lower one. Ken was behind me, and as usual we were playing.  To aid in my eluding him I cranked the wheel hard and took the car off the road and down the grassy slope--seriously cutting the curve and putting me inside the loop of the cloverleaf. I knew he would never take his car off the road and into the grass like that.  I was wrong.  To my surprise he didn't bat an eye and stuck behind me the whole way.  Sometimes nothing but driving skill or luck would lose him.

Actually, one of the funnest experiences I ever had in that car had nothing whatsoever to do with speed or recklessness.

There were four of us out this one particular day. We had left the base to go out to John's place and catch a little buzz after lunch. Afterwards, we were headed back towards Oklahoma City when one of the guys in the back seat started whipping his upper body forward and backward in a straight line as far as he could. Then the guy next to him joined in--both in perfect unison. They got the two of us in the front seat to join in, and pretty soon the four of us were in perfect sync, bobbing our upper bodies forward and backward wildly as we drove down the road. The street was a 35mph main drag that consisted of two lanes going in either direction with a turn lane in the center. I was driving, so that made it a little harder because of the steering wheel. Actually, the very act of driving while all this was taking place was hard.  Imagine the looks we got. Here were four guys wearing matching Air Force fatigues and hats, doing this wild, forward & back motion while going down the road in a resurrected 15 year-old cop car with huge windows. All the while we wore expressionless, deadpan looks on our faces and stared straight ahead. We could see the stares out of the corner of our eyes though, and there were plenty of them. We even kept it going when we were stopped at traffic lights. Great fun! That was one of Black Bart's best moments.  I wish we had YouTube then!

One time four of us were headed out to the northeast corner of the state for a weekend canoeing trip and we got pulled over for speeding. (Imagine that!)  I was sitting in the front seat of the state trooper's car while he wrote me a ticket. He was making comments about my beloved black cop car as he wrote.
"Is that thing even safe to be on the road?" he asked as he looked up at it momentarily then looked back down and continued writing in the ticket book.
"It'll probably outrun this Plymouth." I said, not caring what he thought about it.  I was already in trouble.
"Maybe."

Another example of blatant vehicle abuse came one day when me and Ken decided to have a pushing contest with our cars out in the middle of the barracks parking lot. I carefully eased Black Bart up against the rubberized nose of Ken's GTO. When we got the signal from whoever it was that was there with us, we both floored it. Amid screaming engines and smoking tires, Black Bart steadily pushed Ken's car backward. When we let off the gas I found my throttle to be stuck and had to shut the key off to stop it. Ken parked his car and got out laughing his ass off.  When I got out and opened the hood to unstick the throttle I was surprised to find the engine sitting at a slant! Obviously, my antics caused the motor mounts, already weakened from age, to break completely apart.  With nothing to hold the engine in place, the torque took over and tried to spin it.  I'll bet it would have been interesting to see while it was happening.  After I freed up the throttle linkage the best I could I started the engine back up. With me gently playing the gas pedal while in reverse and a friend prying with a 2x4, we got the engine popped back into position.

I started to neglect Bart and it slowly spiraled downhill.  The wheel covers were probably the earliest casualties.  Over time they ended up coming off during driving stunts, and at some point I removed the remaining ones.  Although that made the car start to look a little more like a beater, it also had a kind of a stealth car look to it.  It had an almost evil "Get out of my way... I've got nothing to lose" look to it.  The paint ended up getting touched up with spray cans here and there, and wherever that happened the gloss was gone.  The fact that I lived in a barracks building didn't help either because there were limited places anyone could wash a car.  Over time I ended up adding to the cars that I owned, and that caused Bart to get more idle time and sit in the parking lot collecting road dust from passing traffic.

One day I came back to the barracks after being out partying with friends.  At that time I had four cars, and the three that weren't being driven were always parked on the outermost row of the parking lot, facing the street so they were out of the way.  I don't remember if I went to swap cars or went to get something out of one of the other cars, but I saw something was in the windshield of Black Bart.  I got in the car and across the whole top of the dash was a long piece of cardboard with a scrawled message across it that read, "Why not stick around?"  Apparently, my parents had dropped in during a vacation trip.  Remember, that was before cell phones.  I had no idea they were there.  I contacted the motel they were staying at, but they had already checked out and gone the day before.  That was strange to think that my parents had driven there from Washington state to visit me in Oklahoma City and never saw them.

One night I had driven Black Bart to a party at someone's house off-base.  I don't know what exactly (or how much of it) clouded my judgement, but Tom asked to borrow my car to go get some beer or something and I mistakenly let him take it.  Someone else went with him, but who it was isn't important.  A couple hours went by.  Tom finally showed up--without my car.  He said he got stuck or something out at Draper Lake.  I was mad obviously, because he was going to a store.  Draper Lake was a man-made reservoir that was surrounded by miles of fun, curvy dirt roads.  We liked to race and have fun on them and we all knew them well.  The next day a couple of us went out to retrieve my car.  When Tom led us to it, I found it straddling a 3-foot deep ditch with its oil pan bashed in.  It started right up, but sounded bad for obvious reasons.  After all, the crankshaft was spinning against the oil pan.  It also had no oil pressure--again no surprise.  In retrospect, I should have towed it.  I could have taken off the oil pan and fixed it right where it was.  No, I was stupid.  I jockeyed it off the ditch and drove it all the way back to the base.  I don't remember how far it actually was, but 'm surprised it made it.  It was sounding pretty bad and starting to overheat.  When I shut it off it stopped turning instantly.  No wind-down.  I basically killed my beloved Black Bart by stupidity on multiple levels.  Yes, I could have fixed it, but I had other cars to drive.  Instead, I called a roll-truck to come and get it.

I argued with the guy that picked it up and managed to get $35 cash out of him.  Regretfully, I watched my poor car go down the road.  I had let him down.

Black Bart had personality.  Black Bart was one-of-a-kind.  And his spot light even still worked.

Black Bart: Part 1

I have had a lot of vehicles in my life.  This is the story of one of them.

Just Bought

It was 1975 when I first saw Black Bart, although he had yet to be named.  May or June I think it was.  I had just completed my 8 months of Air Force electronics training in Biloxi, Mississippi and was home in Auburn for a visit before going to my first real assignment at Tinker AFB in Oklahoma City.  I was sitting on the front steps of my parents' house, drinking a beer and pretending to look cool.  Because Auburn High School is practically across the street from their house there is constant activity to keep your attention.  Anyway, I was watching people and cars go by, when all of a sudden a beautiful older black & white Ford Galaxie drove by with a 'For Sale' sign in its window.  I raced into action, grabbing the keys to whichever of the cars I had nearby at my disposal, and raced after it.  Maybe it was the 20mph school zone or maybe it was the heavy traffic in general, but whatever the reason I did manage to get a glimpse of it while it was still visible way up the road.  It was one of those things like you see on TV where every time I turned the corner I could just see my prey turning a corner onto another street way up ahead of me.  After playing that game for several turns I gained on it enough to see which alley it drove into, and I drove up behind it just as the guy was getting out of the car behind his house.  It turns out it was only $150!  What?!  SOLD!

Exploded Differential

It was beautiful.  It was a 1961 Ford Police Interceptor--exactly like the one they used in The Andy Griffith Show in 1961 (their show was sponsored by Ford so every year they got a new model).  The car had no dents or problems of any kind.  It had a 390 engine and 3-speed automatic and ran smooth as silk.  The spotlight even still worked!  The doors were not as shiny as the rest of the car.  They were originally white and had been painted black to match the rest of the car when it was sold to the public and they had oxidized somewhat.  It had a slightly stained area on the roof where the red "gumball" cop light spent its useful life too.  True to form (for me anyway) I broke the car right away.  I blew the rear end out of it not two hours after I bought it.  It may have had something to do with me doing a burnout at the gas station I used to work at (being a guy = showing off).  I put a junkyard replacement in it the next day and a few days later headed down the road for Oklahoma.

Rest Stop

I've always loved driving, but I really didn't know what to expect when I hit the pavement on my first ever solo road trip.  I took freeways when I had to, but for the most part I stuck to the old concrete highways of yesteryear.  I still love those roads!  At one point on my trip (somewhere in remote Colorado I think) I ran out of gas.  I was young and hadn't yet learned the 'when the gas gauge hits the 1/4 point start looking for a gas station' rule.  I ran out just shy (maybe a quarter mile) of the top of a mountain pass.  I remember that because I was high enough that the road was enveloped by clouds.  I immediately shut it off and coasted to a stop.  I let it sit for about a half hour, knowing that usually you can get an engine to fire back up after it sits like that.  When I decided enough time had passed I put it in neutral, turned the key, and slapped it into drive the instant the engine caught.  I think I just managed to clear the top before it died, and I coasted.  And coasted.  And coasted.  It was a long, long downhill, and believe it or not I finally coasted to a stop several miles later on the turnoff to a gas station, stopping about 100 yards from it.  Can you say lucky?

I wasn't so lucky the next day when I lost a wheel.

The old cop car had a "poor man's cruise control" under the dash, consisting of a t-handle that was hooked to the throttle linkage.  When you were going the speed you wanted, you simply pulled it out to take up the slack then turned it to lock it.  I was on a freeway heading east outside of Amarillo, Texas.  I had the "cruise" pulled out and was running about 85.  I was sitting with both feet across the seat like you would lay sideways on a couch and was leaning against the door, steering with one hand.  Suddenly, I felt an odd wobble.  I quickly swung my feet back to the floor and released the throttle lock, taking full control back.  I had no sooner did that when it wobbled hard and--BANG--the left rear wheel went flying past me, bouncing and rolling at 70+ mph.  The jolting bang was instantly followed by a nasty grinding noise as the part of the car that was previously filled with left rear wheel only a moment before tried to cut a groove into the asphalt.  When I tried to stop, the brake pedal went all the way to the floor.  I knew at that point that the brake drum was still attached to the wheel.  With no brake drum for shoes to contact they just expanded all the way out when I pressed the brake pedal.    Nothing to do but let it come to a stop all by itself.  When it finally did stop and I could survey the damage I was a little upset.  Not that the wheel had come off, but that in doing so it bent the whole left rear quarter panel of an otherwise pristine car outward while it was making its exit.  What had actually happened?  The axle literally broke off flush with the housing, and the wheel and brake drum were propelled forward like a slingshot by the weight of the car rolling over it.  Like I said--the wheel actually passed me when it launched.

It took me a while to find the wheel.  The freeway was two-lanes in each direction, with wide shoulders, a wide grassy median, and no guardrails of any kind.  I was lucky the wheel didn't hit anybody, but traffic was pretty sparse if I remember correctly, so the odds were in my favor.  The car had gone quite a ways with nothing to slow it down but steel digging into roadway.  By the time it finally came to a grinding stop there was about an inch of steel gone from the bottom of the brake backing plate that the shoes are attached to.  The shoes were shot (more like half missing) also.  Not much to do but hitchhike.  A guy gave me a ride and I had him drop me about 2 miles up the road when a gas station came into view.  This was before the days of mini-marts--it was a real service station.  I went inside and explained my situation, throwing my usual humorous slant on things.

"This may sound funny, but do you know where I might find an axle for a 61 Ford?" I asked, fully expecting laughter.  After all, we were out in the middle of nowhere.  I don't think I got laughter though.  Instead, he pointed across the freeway.

"You might try [whatever his name was] place over there.  I think he's got an old Ford around there somewhere."

The gas station was on the corner of an actual intersection on the freeway--not an on-ramp.  Right across freeway, equally in the 'middle of nowhere' was some sort of repair garage.  Believe me, these two businesses were the only things for miles in any direction.

I made my way across the freeway.  I can't remember much about the place, but the guy had a tow truck and there were vehicles scattered here and there in various stages of repair and/or dis-assembly.  I walked up to the only guy I saw there, and hit him with pretty much the same thing as I did across the street.

"The guy across the way said you might know where a person might find an axle for a 61 Ford." I said, trying to sound both hopeful and sure of myself simultaneously.

"I think I got a 62 around back," he said, "Let's go take a look."

He was probably chewing on a piece of hay and wearing overalls (okay, probably not really--I can't remember that much).  We walked around back and it was literally a mini-junkyard.  Tall grass and nothing much had moved in or out in a long time.  When I saw that 62 sitting there in the weeds I was ecstatic.  I gave it a look over and told him it was indeed what I needed.  I explained my predicament to the good ol' boy.  He went out and fired up the tow truck.

"The inside dually on one side won't hold air no more, but that shouldn't be too much of a problem." he said.

I was fine with that... After all--I was already way ahead in the good luck department.  We hopped in and drove it up the freeway.  Because it was a freeway we had to go past it to circle back, and I remember seeing how forlorn it looked sitting there on the side of the road at a strange angle.  He hooked up to my car and towed it back to his shop--driving reasonably slow because of only having three of his four rear tires with air in them.  When we got back, he dropped it in front of his shop then went around back and lifted up the old 62.  Imagine his surprise when I popped the trunk of my car and I donned my personalized white coveralls!  On the back, in neon orange and outlined in black, I had airbrushed 'Willy', my nickname in high school auto shop.  I had all the tools I needed to do the job and got right to it.  I was able to remove all the parts I needed--both small and large.  When I was finished, he dropped it and drove back around front and picked my car back up.  Because the axle had broken off flush I couldn't get it out, but that's okay:  He knew just what do do.  He fired up his arc welder, got a good welding arc going on the broken end of the axle, then just stuffed the electrode (that's the stick that arc welders use that deposits the metal as it melts) right into it--extinguishing the arc.  For folks that don't know, what that does is basically fuse the electrode right into what ever you stuck it to.  He just casually unhooked the electrode holder from the end of the electrode that was stuck to my axle and turned off his welder.  He then bent the electrode and gave it a good yank.  The axle shaft popped right out.  Nice!  I installed all the transplanted parts from the 62 Ford (which were absolutely identical to the 61) and he set it down and unhooked me.  I asked him what I owed him--expecting the worst.  He was amused.  He made some comments about me having those custom coveralls and my own tools, and doing my own work.  He charged me $30!  I couldn't believe it.  I still can't--even now.  That was one nice guy.  In retrospect, I should have given him more, or at the very least, taken down his name and address.

The rest of my trip was uneventful.  Even given the time I lost running out of gas, the 6-hour breakdown when I lost my wheel, and two nights of sleep, I arrived at Tinker Air Force Base in record time.  I left Auburn, Washington, at 9am on Wednesday, and was in Oklahoma City somewhere around 11pm Friday night.

I must have not paid much attention to the speed limit signs...

Next:  Black Bart: Part 2

All Grown Up!

A milestone in Sarah's life took place this week:  My little girl turned 21 years old!

Something people always seem to say about such an event is usually something like, "It seems like just the other day...", or "I can remember when you were just..." followed by some sort of size or age-related remark.

Well, it's the same for me of course.

Sarah was sort of a miracle baby.  Her mom lost one of her ovaries not long before she was pregnant, and just after Sarah was born the remaining one shut down.  It was a small window of opportunity she fell into for sure.  You know--before I was in such a scenario myself, I remember wondering why anyone would really want to see their child being born.  It just seemed like such a messy and private thing.  Well, when the opportunity presented itself to me as a new father, I didn't question it--I was eager to be there.  We only got one ultrasound during the pregnancy and it really didn't provide us with any information about what sex the new baby was, so as she was born I was the one to make the announcement to her mother as she was born.

When she was tiny we put a bunch of little color Formica samples that we got from one of the hardware stores on a bead chain.  We got them together as sort of a jingly thing for her to play with when we were in the car.  We called them her colors.  When we were ready to go somewhere we'd say, "Sarah, where are your colors?"  She'd start looking around until she found them.  She never went anywhere without her colors.  She knew fuchsia, teal, and all sorts of other colors before she could even walk.  I remember fuchsia was "booshba" to her.  If you tried to fool her with any colors she'd catch it right off the bat.

My favorite times with Sarah were reading stories to her.  Her mom and I were avid garage sale shoppers, and we amassed a huge collection of children's books.  I think I remember counting and we had over 600 of them.  When Sarah was an infant, her mother and I made a pact that we would never deny her if she wanted us to read to her.  Little did we know how much we would have to follow through on that decision.  From even before she could walk she would pull as many books as she possibly could off her bookshelf and head toward the nearest of us that was sitting.  I remember reading  a half a dozen books to her, and the whole time she would be intently focused on every single word and picture on every page.  When the last of the stack of books would be finished, I would breathe a sigh of relief.  Trouble is, she would climb down, toddle over to the shelf, and grab another armload.  We read a lot of stories over the years.  Her love for the books never waned.  I was always on the lookout for books that were a little different--books that offered a little more imagination.  Those were my favorites.  I also chose the ones with the best artwork.

I loved to go on drives with her.  I put some custom seat belts in the center of my pickup truck that were long enough to embrace her booster seat, and she was my copilot.  She chattered away, taking in everything that she saw.

I helped her with school projects a few times over the years, and like many parents probably went a little overboard--like one particular time when she was in maybe second grade.  Her school was named after the astronaut Dick Scobee, and they would occasionally have space-related events.  This time all the kids in her class were to dress up in some kind of special outfit or hat and they would parade in and out of every classroom in the school.  For Sarah, I made a helmet.  It was a motorcycle helmet that was covered in aluminum foil, and was equipped with a custom-made rotating dish antenna on top.  I made the antenna out of the top half of a Dri-Z-Air cage and some kind of battery powered rotating lollipop that was in the stores at the time.  All she had to do was reach up and push a button to start it rotating.  She was a hit!  Another time I made her a tuned xylophone out of electrical conduit for her music class.  I think she still has that one.

She was immersed in all sorts of things as she grew up.  Her mom insisted on exposing her to dance classes.  She did that for a few years.  I hated dance recitals.  I couldn't stand waiting for her to appear on stage and having to endure all those other fledglings, but when she was up there I'd get all teary-eyed and proud.  We also had her in soccer for several years.  I was one of the few parents that actually stood out and watched during practices.  I don't remember how many years she was kicking soccer balls, but it seems like it was like 8 or 9.  I've always liked to see her learning and progressing in the things she did.  Volleyball, art, math... There were so many things she was good at.

As she got older, things started happening faster.  I remember one time when it occurred to me that I was officially unable to help her with her math homework any longer.  She was way over my head in middle school.  It seems like the older she got the less I remember things.  I guess it was just the fact that the older a child gets the less direct parental involvement and supervision is taking place.

Ask almost any father and he will say the same thing:  "She may be an adult now, but she will always be my little girl."

Things I Can't Forget: 1

I labeled this #1 just in case I decide to add others at a later date.  There are others, but I don't know if I'll write about them.  Maybe--maybe not.

All my childhood there was something that I would hear from my dad during times we kids were being kids.  You know how it is... One kid does something to another, the other one does it back.  Maybe it repeats itself multiple times before the inevitable, but sooner or later the same thing happens--'mom, he did this to me, mom, he did that to me--mom, he's picking on me... You know the drill.  Unless you're an only child you've been involved in it at one time or another.  Maybe you were the instigator, the complainer, or maybe you were just a bystander.

Growing up in a family of 5 kids it happened a lot in our family.

Our whining was always directed at mom, but occasionally dad would be within earshot.  My dad had this thing he would say whenever someone would utter the phrase of complaint, and that would be, "Punch him in the mouth!"  We heard it so many times that it was nothing unusual.  I'm sure he uttered it to be funny--never expecting  that anyone would actually do it.  I mean come on--the mouth!?  What kind of father wants his kids doing that?

I don't remember the exact scenario, nor do I remember exactly how old we were.  I remember that I was outside in the back yard at our house in Auburn.  Apparently, my brother, Don, did something I didn't like.  I don't know why, but for some reason, my dad's words popped into my mind, and without thinking or hesitating, I did it:  I punched him in the mouth.  I don't know how hard I did it, but it stopped him in his tracks and knocked him down.  Of course, he cried--probably as much out of disbelief as he did of pain.  The instant I did it I couldn't believe I did it.  I didn't know what to do then.  Apologize?  Run?  As you can expect, it didn't go over well with mom.  She sent us both to our room to lie down.  I think it was one of those, 'wait 'til your dad gets home!' type things.  When he got home nothing happened of course.  I mean, what was he going to do?  Chastise me for actually listening to him?

I hate that I hit my brother like that, and it has eaten away at me my whole life.  I don't think I have ever been really close to any of my brothers or sisters, but after that Don had a reason to hate me.  Whether or not he did so consciously, I'm sure he must have had that tidbit tucked away in his mind.

My dad was not a good parent for life's lessons.  I've said so many, many times before in my blog posts.  This was probably the first time it became apparent to me that he didn't have any good advice or wisdom.

I hate, hate, hate that I succumbed to a stupid remark that my dad meaninglessly uttered one too many times.  I've done a lot of stupid things in my life but hitting my brother that way was right up there at the top of the list.  Some stupid things you do are easily forgotten, but the ones that traumatize you or affect you deeply in some way are not forgotten.  Instead, they burrow deep and fester--staying noticeable enough to never forget them but not really getting worse.

What does he keep hidden from this episode?  I have no idea.  Like I said--we're not close.  Maybe he remembers it vividly, and maybe he can hardly muster even a vague recollection.

I'm truly sorry Don.  Sorry for hitting you in the first place, and even more sorry for letting a little voice of dad tell me to do it.  If it's any consolation, I have had it eating at me pretty much my whole life as one of the biggest mistakes I've ever made.  Family should be first and formost, and that's no way to treat family.  It's no wonder you moved to Georgia.  There was no respect for you here.

We can't change the past.  We can, however, use it to keep other people from making the same stupid-ass mistakes that we make.  That's what this post is for.

For anyone else reading this:  Don't listen to dumb-ass advice from people--friends, relatives, or whatever.  If it doesn't feel right, it's not right.

Rediscovered "Wealth"

It was one of those times when you "find" money.  But not quite.

Most of us have been through one of those kind of situations where you find money that wasn't really lost.  stuff like:  You're pulling clothes out of the dryer and you find coins in the bottom.  You pull out your winter coat and wear it for the first time in the fall and find money in one of the pockets.  That kinda stuff.  Not the situation where you do actually find money--like laying in a parking lot or something.

In this case, I knew the money was there--It just wasn't quite spendable.  It was foreign.

Sue and I were talking about travel and this time were on the subject of Italy.  Then we got onto the subject of money.  Then I mentioned that I thought I had some Italian Lira still around somewhere, at least one item of which was in the form of a Gettone coin, which are the strange coins that the Italian phone booths took when I was there in the 70's.  The phone booth coin slots had a shape that required these special coins to operate.  I went to the safe and pulled out a big envelope that I had in there with foreign currency in it.  No Gettone coin, but I did find one piece of Italian Lira paper money.

That really wasn't where this post was going though.  I was just setting up the story.

Inside that envelope I also found a bunch of Turkish Lira.  I counted out the pretty paper notes and had 950 Lira total.  I remember thinking that when I left Turkey I still had this in my wallet and never did get around to exchanging it.  I think it was somewhere around $30 bucks worth at the time.  Anyway, I popped up my currency exchange app on my iPod and entered my 950 under the Turkish Lira.

Whoa... $558!  That was considerably more than it was worth back in the 70's!

Briefly, we discussed how cool that was, what I might do with it, where to exchange it, etc.  Then I noticed something:

The exchange said new Turkish Lira.  Hmm.

I was holding in my hand, old Turkish Lira.  It had been replaced in 2005 by new Turkish Lira.  Apparently their currency had been in constant decline for so long that it was worth less and less as time went on.  When they replaced the old with the new, they did it out of convenience so people didn't have to carry an inch-thick wad of money to the corner store to buy a loaf of bread.  The new Lira was the same as the old Lira, but they had dropped 6 zeroes off of it!

So what is my 950 Lira worth?  If I'm doing the math right... It's worth approximately .0006 dollars.

Like I said:  Easy come, easy go.

The Fire

I don't know why this just popped into my head the other day.  Sue and I were having a conversation about something or another and there it was... Surfacing from the depths of my memory like a "B" movie submarine with Russian writing on it:

It was the day our house caught fire.

I don't know how much (if at all) any of my brothers and sisters remember about it, but we came that close (holds up a finger caliper that reads about .625 inches) to losing our house one day.

We moved into that house in the summer of '68 so I'm going to say it was probably somewhere around the following year that it took place.  If memory serves me it was in decent weather, so let's say it was spring or thereabouts.

My dad had this little shoestring business he started while we were still living in Algona.  It was called Williams & Son, but I really had nothing at all to do with it.  I think he thought it just sounded way cooler.  It does sound professional--I'll give it that.  His "business" was selling parts & accessories and repairing small single-cylinder Honda motorcycles.  It was never about getting rich, rather, it was about him paying for the needs of our family motorcycles.  He didn't have a business license but through the use of the name and/or letterhead he had found a couple of suppliers that would sell to him at wholesale.  Basically, he made just enough money to help offset some of our own motorcycle expenses.  Anyway, instead of having his business in his garage like normal people, he opted to have it in the basement when we moved into our Auburn house.  That would be fine for the tools, the workshop and all that, but not for the actual repairing of motorcycles.  After all, there were basement steps to navigate, right?

One day he had someones Honda downstairs and had done some sort of repair to it and was attempting to start it.  Right off the bat that doesn't sound too bright does it?  We must have loved the smell of exhaust.  Anyway, I wasn't directly involved in the repair process, but I was down there with him, watching and learning like I usually did.  There was some sort of malfunction (I'm going call it a fuel leak).  He most likely had the spark plug out of the cylinder and plugged into the spark plug wire and was kicking it over and checking for spark.  Well, the spark was there.  So was the gas.

In as instant, it was on fire.  Panic ensues.  I was already on the side of the bike that was opposite the door, and when the POOF of flame happened I shrunk back away even further.  I'm sure I had no idea what to do--A flaming motorcycle in your basement kind of takes you by surprise.  My dad was grabbing stuff and swinging it at the fire which was getting bigger.  Sometime during the first few seconds he brought my mom into the picture and she called the fire department.  It was HUGELY chaotic.  Obviously, I can't remember the actual events as they happened, but I remember them hollering at me to get out of there, so I ran by the burning motorcycle and hot-footed it out the door. Their house (yes, they still live there) has a very low basement ceiling like many houses do, and the fire was reaching the ceiling above it by the time I ran past.

I have no idea if they ever tried any water or anything on the fire.  I would guess not because everything was happening so fast.  There were no fire extinguishers (not many houses did to my knowledge). 

I remember only one thing that got taken out of the house in the panic:  The long front drawer out of our desk.  I don't know why--I guess it had some important papers in it.  More likely:  He hollered at her to grab and she just grabbed.  Maybe they got more items than that out of the house.  If so I don't remember it.

The fire department came quickly.  Lucky us.  The fire was put out quickly.  It had eaten its way through the floor into the bathroom above, but had been caught in time that a great deal of damage wasn't done.  Maybe my dad did manage to suppress it a little to buy some time before the fire department got there--I don't know.  When it was all put out, I remember the FD hanging two giant doorway fans in the house--one in the back door blowing outward, and one in the front door blowing inward.  The smoke was evacuated pretty quickly, but entire house was thick with smoke for a while so I'm sure there was plenty of cleanup.

We were lucky.  I don't think we had lived there very long at all at that point, and I know for a fact that everything we owned as a family was in that house. Our family was always heavy into taking pictures.  I can't even imagine us losing those hundreds and hundreds (thousands maybe?) of slides and pictures of all of us as we were growing up that we had accumulated.

Lucky.

I'm pretty sure that was the last gas engine of any kind that was ever started within the walls of our house.

I could be wrong though.  Time heals all wounds, and as wounds go, that fire was a shallow one.