Kent H. Elliott's Blog
June 19, 2020
SURGERY LIMERICKS
“I’m so sorry.” I heard those words from the medical professionals—the folks who know what glioblastoma is, and its unstoppable nature. Then, along came COVID-19 and the Corona pandemic reminding us that there are many ways to die. And we all eventually use one.
Still, you see, the limerick must go on. Limericks are supposed be silly, or at least humorous. I’m only partly successful in that. But when a rhyme from the operating room led to the limerick form, what could I do? Then I was stuck with the five lines “poems”.
They are personal. It started because of a rhyme, the urology surgeon’s name and the nature of the robotic surgery she was so skilled at demanded “poetry.”
Because the first poem revealed itself as limerick, I was stuck with that form and meter. I wrote another after eye surgery, so now I’m cornered. I have to commemorate all surgical procedure, five line each. First up, Dr. Lisa Bland, Urology Surgeon. Here you go:
I once thought my bladder was too little;
Dashing often to privy to piddle.
Sent to see good Doctor Bland
She took out my prostate gland.
That cancer’s down. All’s well, though I dribble.
That cancer has stayed out of the way for years. I was told there was a tiny spot that she couldn’t remove, so we monitored it until I was living here at a retirement facility—now with a Do Not Resuscitate advice.
Eye surgery would bring new fears. Dr. Jacek Kotowski is meticulous in detail and at fixing vision problems. He calmed my nerves with his competence in all of the details.
Poke inside my eye? I made a tough decision
To improve eye health required tiny incision.
New lens for cloudy quickly exchanged,
And retinal membrane rearranged,
Doctor K does all with amazing precision.
OR, and a little better,
Poke inside my eye? It may improve my vision.
In trepidation I made the right decision.
New lens for cloudy quickly exchanged,
Then retinal membrane rearranged,
Doctor K does all with amazing precision.
Back with Dr. Kotowski and others a few years later. We’ll soon include Dr. Marwan Massouh and Dr. Kenneth Brewington:
Doctor K felt quite certain I’d had a stroke
But glioblastoma is never a joke
Doctor B did a brain biopsy,
I’m thankful it’s not yet autopsy.
That comes. This cancer has a way to kill folk.
If you can find anything funny in brain surgery, your sense of humor is more sophisticate than mine.
Doctor Brewington’s biopsy said
Within the year you’ll likely be dead.
Now I treasure each day
With some telephone play
And take Doctor Massouh’s prescribed med.
I guess when Dr. Nathaniel Readal pulled a stone from my kidney, it’s surgery.
Sharp pain came suddenly with portents of doom.
I knew I would need the emergency room.
Consultation there
Led to treatment where
Doc R pulled stone while I dreamt in deep gloom.
And that's enough. Can I be done with surgeries now? I don't want to run out of rhyming words.
Still, you see, the limerick must go on. Limericks are supposed be silly, or at least humorous. I’m only partly successful in that. But when a rhyme from the operating room led to the limerick form, what could I do? Then I was stuck with the five lines “poems”.
They are personal. It started because of a rhyme, the urology surgeon’s name and the nature of the robotic surgery she was so skilled at demanded “poetry.”
Because the first poem revealed itself as limerick, I was stuck with that form and meter. I wrote another after eye surgery, so now I’m cornered. I have to commemorate all surgical procedure, five line each. First up, Dr. Lisa Bland, Urology Surgeon. Here you go:
I once thought my bladder was too little;
Dashing often to privy to piddle.
Sent to see good Doctor Bland
She took out my prostate gland.
That cancer’s down. All’s well, though I dribble.
That cancer has stayed out of the way for years. I was told there was a tiny spot that she couldn’t remove, so we monitored it until I was living here at a retirement facility—now with a Do Not Resuscitate advice.
Eye surgery would bring new fears. Dr. Jacek Kotowski is meticulous in detail and at fixing vision problems. He calmed my nerves with his competence in all of the details.
Poke inside my eye? I made a tough decision
To improve eye health required tiny incision.
New lens for cloudy quickly exchanged,
And retinal membrane rearranged,
Doctor K does all with amazing precision.
OR, and a little better,
Poke inside my eye? It may improve my vision.
In trepidation I made the right decision.
New lens for cloudy quickly exchanged,
Then retinal membrane rearranged,
Doctor K does all with amazing precision.
Back with Dr. Kotowski and others a few years later. We’ll soon include Dr. Marwan Massouh and Dr. Kenneth Brewington:
Doctor K felt quite certain I’d had a stroke
But glioblastoma is never a joke
Doctor B did a brain biopsy,
I’m thankful it’s not yet autopsy.
That comes. This cancer has a way to kill folk.
If you can find anything funny in brain surgery, your sense of humor is more sophisticate than mine.
Doctor Brewington’s biopsy said
Within the year you’ll likely be dead.
Now I treasure each day
With some telephone play
And take Doctor Massouh’s prescribed med.
I guess when Dr. Nathaniel Readal pulled a stone from my kidney, it’s surgery.
Sharp pain came suddenly with portents of doom.
I knew I would need the emergency room.
Consultation there
Led to treatment where
Doc R pulled stone while I dreamt in deep gloom.
And that's enough. Can I be done with surgeries now? I don't want to run out of rhyming words.
June 13, 2020
A Leaky Roof Back in the Day
While we’re on the subject of leaky roofs, come fifty years back in time with me. It’ll only take a few minutes. I was living in a shack out back. I called it a chicken coop, but it did have two rooms with cooking facilities and a claw-foot bathtub. This was in western Oregon where I was attending college and where it rained all winter. It was cheap rent, almost as cheap as low-ceilinged shack where one fiend Bill had so recently lived. He moved to an apartment in the old house in front of my shack that had been converted to several apartments. The house faced the street. The shack had a flat roof and a pitch angle no more than 10° or 15° from level. Shingle paper, the stuff you roll out not laid shingles covered the roof.
The landlady’s husband (She ran the business. He helped maintain their properties around town.) did some patching when the leaks were still minor. I think he did more damage walking on the roof than he solved with fiber tar. Whichever—it still leaked. And it got worse with each rainy day.
The landlord added a dehumidifier. The machine was not small. Not too big to use, but really! Is that a solution? He drilled a hose size hole in the floor, stuck the drain tube through the floor to let it run out under the shack. It was a house with holes where shingles should be protecting above. Now it had also had a machine supposed to keep the air less damp inside while a drying machine increased wetness underneath.
The dehumidifier did not keep rain water from dripping on the bed. I could find no place in that room where the old double bed could avoid the drips. It is kind of hard to sleep well with cans catching rain water around and on you. Lemme tell ya.
I had read somewhere, sometime, about a system that a tribal culture somewhere in Asia used to keep rainwater away from sleeping family. I can’t recall what groups did this—may have been Mongolia, maybe Afghanistan, or somewhere in between. I hear there’s lots of territory and different cultures out there that we call Asia.
I hoped my plan would work, but was doubtful. I’m a pessimist that way. I had to try something, so off we go. I put some hooks at corners of the ceiling and tied my ugliest well-worn sheet to them. If you’ve lived as long as I have you know this sheet. It’s the ugly one with the green diamond design to look like square sides of cubes, the squares in yellow and white. Well, I took that lovely artifact and strung it across the ceiling with a deliberate sag in the center. With a bucket on the bed, I watched the sheet dampen and then drip from that low point. I next fastened a string to the sheet at the low point, near the center of the sheet and also of the bed.
So, we come to the risky “this’ll never work” part, the feature I was most skeptical about. I ran the string to a coffee can propped on the bed’s metal headboard. But, by golly, it worked. The rainwater ran down the string and into the “bucket.” As long as I didn’t allow saggy places lower than my contraption, all was well. When a corner of the sheet came undone from its ceiling hook one afternoon, I was lucky to be at home. I should have been at the library, of course.
My father visited me as the time of rain was beginning to wane. So, the sheet and bucket were still hanging, just in case. I tried to foist the crappy folding back sofa on him for the one night of his visit (after we’d attended the annual Nā Haumāna O Hawai’i Luau which had given us the good fortune of coinciding with Dads travels).
On the way back to the shack I stopped at a dormitory and picked up the sleeping bag I’d arranged to borrow. This prompts a little side trip. We got the bag and took it to the shack. As I unrolled it the aroma hit. Pastures of plenty! Dad would not want to sleep in the room with that strong aroma of marijuana. I slept fairly well on the ratty sofa in a sleeping bag that made it quite pleasantly mellow. When I think about it, I don’t reckon Dad would have been comfortable anywhere in that shack. We agreed that Mom did not need to know details about the quality of my living accommodations. Hey, the rent was cheap. The night’s rain shower went to the coffee can bucket. The happy weed sleeping bag was for just one night.
Since that time my roofing experiences have mostly been at Camp Mimanagish: fiber tar filling holes on the Half Moon Dining Hall (named for the curved roof); nailing down the ridge roll and shakes while straddling the peak of the steep chapel roof (a painful job); helping lay rolled tar paper on lodge roof. Otherwise, I try to keep my feet on the ground. The Half-Moon was fun, with Ralph D aiming his powerful flashlight from inside, while I watched and attempted to plug holes as they appeared in the his beam.
Add it all up and it isn’t a roofing career, only enough to claim limited experience. But how many “run down the string” solutions have you seen in the USA. I’d really like to kno
The landlady’s husband (She ran the business. He helped maintain their properties around town.) did some patching when the leaks were still minor. I think he did more damage walking on the roof than he solved with fiber tar. Whichever—it still leaked. And it got worse with each rainy day.
The landlord added a dehumidifier. The machine was not small. Not too big to use, but really! Is that a solution? He drilled a hose size hole in the floor, stuck the drain tube through the floor to let it run out under the shack. It was a house with holes where shingles should be protecting above. Now it had also had a machine supposed to keep the air less damp inside while a drying machine increased wetness underneath.
The dehumidifier did not keep rain water from dripping on the bed. I could find no place in that room where the old double bed could avoid the drips. It is kind of hard to sleep well with cans catching rain water around and on you. Lemme tell ya.
I had read somewhere, sometime, about a system that a tribal culture somewhere in Asia used to keep rainwater away from sleeping family. I can’t recall what groups did this—may have been Mongolia, maybe Afghanistan, or somewhere in between. I hear there’s lots of territory and different cultures out there that we call Asia.
I hoped my plan would work, but was doubtful. I’m a pessimist that way. I had to try something, so off we go. I put some hooks at corners of the ceiling and tied my ugliest well-worn sheet to them. If you’ve lived as long as I have you know this sheet. It’s the ugly one with the green diamond design to look like square sides of cubes, the squares in yellow and white. Well, I took that lovely artifact and strung it across the ceiling with a deliberate sag in the center. With a bucket on the bed, I watched the sheet dampen and then drip from that low point. I next fastened a string to the sheet at the low point, near the center of the sheet and also of the bed.
So, we come to the risky “this’ll never work” part, the feature I was most skeptical about. I ran the string to a coffee can propped on the bed’s metal headboard. But, by golly, it worked. The rainwater ran down the string and into the “bucket.” As long as I didn’t allow saggy places lower than my contraption, all was well. When a corner of the sheet came undone from its ceiling hook one afternoon, I was lucky to be at home. I should have been at the library, of course.
My father visited me as the time of rain was beginning to wane. So, the sheet and bucket were still hanging, just in case. I tried to foist the crappy folding back sofa on him for the one night of his visit (after we’d attended the annual Nā Haumāna O Hawai’i Luau which had given us the good fortune of coinciding with Dads travels).
On the way back to the shack I stopped at a dormitory and picked up the sleeping bag I’d arranged to borrow. This prompts a little side trip. We got the bag and took it to the shack. As I unrolled it the aroma hit. Pastures of plenty! Dad would not want to sleep in the room with that strong aroma of marijuana. I slept fairly well on the ratty sofa in a sleeping bag that made it quite pleasantly mellow. When I think about it, I don’t reckon Dad would have been comfortable anywhere in that shack. We agreed that Mom did not need to know details about the quality of my living accommodations. Hey, the rent was cheap. The night’s rain shower went to the coffee can bucket. The happy weed sleeping bag was for just one night.
Since that time my roofing experiences have mostly been at Camp Mimanagish: fiber tar filling holes on the Half Moon Dining Hall (named for the curved roof); nailing down the ridge roll and shakes while straddling the peak of the steep chapel roof (a painful job); helping lay rolled tar paper on lodge roof. Otherwise, I try to keep my feet on the ground. The Half-Moon was fun, with Ralph D aiming his powerful flashlight from inside, while I watched and attempted to plug holes as they appeared in the his beam.
Add it all up and it isn’t a roofing career, only enough to claim limited experience. But how many “run down the string” solutions have you seen in the USA. I’d really like to kno
May 3, 2020
Dad and the Reivers
Among the Elliott family ancestry are Reivers who “worked” the night shift on the Scottish-English border. No matter where the border was claimed at the moment, they were ready to enforce their entitlement to more land and property to the side they could hold for a time. Northumberland should always be ours, in whole or in part. The border was always shifting back and forth in those days.
We speak often of experiences in our families of origin. Is it wrong to think we ought to commit more of them to writing? Does posterity care?
When I was young, my dad and grandma, who lived with us, on mom’s side shared the family storytelling duties. So, like a gooAmong the Elliott family ancestry are Reivers who “worked” the night shift on the Scottish-English border. No matter where the border was claimed at the moment, they were ready to enforce their entitlement to more land and property to the side they could hold for a time. Northumberland should always be ours, in whole or in part. The border was always shifting back and forth in those days.
We speak often of experiences in our families of origin. Is it wrong to think we ought to commit more of them to writing? Does posterity care?
When I was young, my dad and grandma, who lived with us, on mom’s side shared the family storytelling duties. So, like a good Elliott and Reiver, I’m taking the entitlement and writing it down.
Whenever Dad met someone named Elliott (or Elliot, or Eliot, or—well no, I’ve never met an Ellyotte, but I have searched for odd spellings.) for the first time he was ready to make his claim about our ancestors on the Scottish-English border. He was ready to tell every other Elliott about the border brigands, the nighttime shepherds of stolen livestock. He always, as I remember it, called the nighttime thieves border brigands or nighttime sheep stealers. It was only more recently that I have learned to call these border raiders “Reivers,” and I still don’t know the best pronunciation of the word. After dark sheepherders was description enough.
Dad often told his tale as if he were making it up there and then. He was pleased and made sure to tell us later that day, when he met another Elliott.
The most common response when this happened was, “that’s interesting.” And the conversation would move on to other topics of mutual interest. This time, however, he got an answer. “It’s true.” The man could tell Dad was kidding around, so he took the opportunity for some true history telling. “It’s true. The clan claimed land on both sides of the border. Chieftans were selected and raised up then quickly tossed aside when conditions changed. The border was always fluid, but for some reason it seemed always to be a border between Scotland and England, the entire region in Northumberland, but not an independent Northumberland nation.”
Dad lit up at this knowledge. And he told all who would hear of his proud, violent, and devious forebears. Friends and neighbors laughed and told their own family stories – ribald, warring, or dull. Always long, long ago so it is only family mythology.
With the exception of that one neighbor. Not the neighbors who lived with their daughter and family a couple blocks east of us. That was Henry E. and he didn’t object when his son-in-law hired me to mow the big lawn, while the older folks kept up the lawn trimming. No, this was a woman who lived a few blocks farther away in the other direction.
She could not tolerate her family name being so besmirched this way. She had enjoyed genealogical research for years. However, some things she just didn’t want to know. Reivers were those naughty boys. They could not be worthy or ever even wear the wonderful Elliot clan tartan. The tartan is still our honored symbol of clan allegiance—including the memory of Reivers.
I am the last of our little immediate family line of Elliott’s. None named Elliott follow after me among our immediate relations. I write this to keep our history a little bit alive.
I still love the tartan and my father’s pride in our Reivers.
d Elliott and Reiver, I’m taking the entitlement and writing it down.
Whenever Dad met someone named Elliott (or Elliot, or Eliot, or—well no, I’ve never met an Ellyotte, but I have searched for odd spellings.) for the first time he was ready to make his claim about our ancestors on the Scottish-English border. He was ready to tell every other Elliott about the border brigands, the nighttime shepherds of stolen livestock. He always, as I remember it, called the nighttime thieves border brigands or nighttime sheep stealers. It was only more recently that I have learned to call these border raiders “Reivers,” and I still don’t know the best pronunciation of the word. After dark sheepherders was description enough.
Dad often told his tale as if he were making it up there and then. He was pleased and made sure to tell us later that day, when he met another Elliott.
The most common response when this happened was, “that’s interesting.” And the conversation would move on to other topics of mutual interest. This time, however, he got an answer. “It’s true.” The man could tell Dad was kidding around, so he took the opportunity for some true history telling. “It’s true. The clan claimed land on both sides of the border. Chieftans were selected and raised up then quickly tossed aside when conditions changed. The border was always fluid, but for some reason it seemed always to be a border between Scotland and England, the entire region in Northumberland, but not an independent Northumberland nation.”
Dad lit up at this knowledge. And he told all who would hear of his proud, violent, and devious forebears. Friends and neighbors laughed and told their own family stories – ribald, warring, or dull. Always long, long ago so it is only family mythology.
With the exception of that one neighbor. Not the neighbors who lived with their daughter and family a couple blocks east of us. That was Henry E. and he didn’t object when his son-in-law hired me to mow the big lawn, while the older folks kept up the lawn trimming. No, this was a woman who lived a few blocks farther away in the other direction.
She could not tolerate her family name being so besmirched this way. She had enjoyed genealogical research for years. However, some things she just didn’t want to know. Reivers were those naughty boys. They could not be worthy or ever even wear the wonderful Elliot clan tartan. The tartan is still our honored symbol of clan allegiance—including the memory of Reivers.
I am the last of our little immediate family line of Elliott’s. None named Elliott follow after me among our immediate relations. I write this to keep our history a little bit alive.
I still love the tartan and my father’s pride in our Reivers.
We speak often of experiences in our families of origin. Is it wrong to think we ought to commit more of them to writing? Does posterity care?
When I was young, my dad and grandma, who lived with us, on mom’s side shared the family storytelling duties. So, like a gooAmong the Elliott family ancestry are Reivers who “worked” the night shift on the Scottish-English border. No matter where the border was claimed at the moment, they were ready to enforce their entitlement to more land and property to the side they could hold for a time. Northumberland should always be ours, in whole or in part. The border was always shifting back and forth in those days.
We speak often of experiences in our families of origin. Is it wrong to think we ought to commit more of them to writing? Does posterity care?
When I was young, my dad and grandma, who lived with us, on mom’s side shared the family storytelling duties. So, like a good Elliott and Reiver, I’m taking the entitlement and writing it down.
Whenever Dad met someone named Elliott (or Elliot, or Eliot, or—well no, I’ve never met an Ellyotte, but I have searched for odd spellings.) for the first time he was ready to make his claim about our ancestors on the Scottish-English border. He was ready to tell every other Elliott about the border brigands, the nighttime shepherds of stolen livestock. He always, as I remember it, called the nighttime thieves border brigands or nighttime sheep stealers. It was only more recently that I have learned to call these border raiders “Reivers,” and I still don’t know the best pronunciation of the word. After dark sheepherders was description enough.
Dad often told his tale as if he were making it up there and then. He was pleased and made sure to tell us later that day, when he met another Elliott.
The most common response when this happened was, “that’s interesting.” And the conversation would move on to other topics of mutual interest. This time, however, he got an answer. “It’s true.” The man could tell Dad was kidding around, so he took the opportunity for some true history telling. “It’s true. The clan claimed land on both sides of the border. Chieftans were selected and raised up then quickly tossed aside when conditions changed. The border was always fluid, but for some reason it seemed always to be a border between Scotland and England, the entire region in Northumberland, but not an independent Northumberland nation.”
Dad lit up at this knowledge. And he told all who would hear of his proud, violent, and devious forebears. Friends and neighbors laughed and told their own family stories – ribald, warring, or dull. Always long, long ago so it is only family mythology.
With the exception of that one neighbor. Not the neighbors who lived with their daughter and family a couple blocks east of us. That was Henry E. and he didn’t object when his son-in-law hired me to mow the big lawn, while the older folks kept up the lawn trimming. No, this was a woman who lived a few blocks farther away in the other direction.
She could not tolerate her family name being so besmirched this way. She had enjoyed genealogical research for years. However, some things she just didn’t want to know. Reivers were those naughty boys. They could not be worthy or ever even wear the wonderful Elliot clan tartan. The tartan is still our honored symbol of clan allegiance—including the memory of Reivers.
I am the last of our little immediate family line of Elliott’s. None named Elliott follow after me among our immediate relations. I write this to keep our history a little bit alive.
I still love the tartan and my father’s pride in our Reivers.
d Elliott and Reiver, I’m taking the entitlement and writing it down.
Whenever Dad met someone named Elliott (or Elliot, or Eliot, or—well no, I’ve never met an Ellyotte, but I have searched for odd spellings.) for the first time he was ready to make his claim about our ancestors on the Scottish-English border. He was ready to tell every other Elliott about the border brigands, the nighttime shepherds of stolen livestock. He always, as I remember it, called the nighttime thieves border brigands or nighttime sheep stealers. It was only more recently that I have learned to call these border raiders “Reivers,” and I still don’t know the best pronunciation of the word. After dark sheepherders was description enough.
Dad often told his tale as if he were making it up there and then. He was pleased and made sure to tell us later that day, when he met another Elliott.
The most common response when this happened was, “that’s interesting.” And the conversation would move on to other topics of mutual interest. This time, however, he got an answer. “It’s true.” The man could tell Dad was kidding around, so he took the opportunity for some true history telling. “It’s true. The clan claimed land on both sides of the border. Chieftans were selected and raised up then quickly tossed aside when conditions changed. The border was always fluid, but for some reason it seemed always to be a border between Scotland and England, the entire region in Northumberland, but not an independent Northumberland nation.”
Dad lit up at this knowledge. And he told all who would hear of his proud, violent, and devious forebears. Friends and neighbors laughed and told their own family stories – ribald, warring, or dull. Always long, long ago so it is only family mythology.
With the exception of that one neighbor. Not the neighbors who lived with their daughter and family a couple blocks east of us. That was Henry E. and he didn’t object when his son-in-law hired me to mow the big lawn, while the older folks kept up the lawn trimming. No, this was a woman who lived a few blocks farther away in the other direction.
She could not tolerate her family name being so besmirched this way. She had enjoyed genealogical research for years. However, some things she just didn’t want to know. Reivers were those naughty boys. They could not be worthy or ever even wear the wonderful Elliot clan tartan. The tartan is still our honored symbol of clan allegiance—including the memory of Reivers.
I am the last of our little immediate family line of Elliott’s. None named Elliott follow after me among our immediate relations. I write this to keep our history a little bit alive.
I still love the tartan and my father’s pride in our Reivers.
October 12, 2019
Golfing with Joe in Heaven: A Mythic Whimsy
The doctors said something is growing on my brain. It doesn’t belong there. I’m thinking about life and death, cancer and treatments, and all that sort of morbid/hope stuff.
Memory takes me to a little daydream. An afterlife scene. Granted, whatever might or might not be beyond death, it cannot be like this. For a United Methodist minister, I’m rather agnostic about it. I do believe there is more to our lives and the kindom of God that Jesus offers transcends time and space. But it is about the way we ought to live in the here and now. My whimsy is mythic, taking earthly substance. Let’s admit it is too corporeal to be anything more than whimsical story. Then again, it is my daydream and I shall share it with you regardless.
~~~
I was remembering Randy “Joe” and his brain cancer struggles. So, let me tell you a bit about the friend I knew as Joe, although his name was Randy. Don’t ask me why he was Joe in our little circle. That’s just the way it was. Joe was the guy who got my jokes. I occasionally offered some bit of light humor within a Sunday sermon. Most of the folks in the pews would give me that look that says, “What’s he talking about now?” Joe would burst out laughing. I could love the guy for that alone. But there was so much more as he battled brain cancer while he kept on being Joe. He loved to lead games with the kids at our annual worship and picnic in Washoe Park. After he died, we named the event “The Randy Joe N___ Memorial Picnic.”
Joe was determined to teach me how to play a reasonable game of golf, in spite of the cancer that was gradually taking him down. So, we went golfing. Not yet fifty years old, seizures forced Joe to give up driving a car, so I would drive us out to the Country Club. Joe borrowed Sparky’s golf cart and, on the fairway, he had the fun of being in the driver’s seat again.
~~~
I’m thinking about life and death and brain cancer. Now that I know how nasty my tumors are, I dream a whimsy of something more, completely incomprehensible. My thoughts add a texture, an earthly reality to my picture of an Other Side. We know that Joe left this life when the cancer took it. His victory over the disease came with passing to that something beyond. It is not at all clear in my imagining whether my brain tumors will take me away, or something else. That doesn’t matter, anyway.
I dream my arrival at those pearly gates. Except there is no gate in my vision – only wide open, lightness of cloud and green grass. Green grass. A fairway. Tee blocks labeled “1” in front of me. A green with number flag is a reasonable distance off to my right. I see it clearly even in right peripheral vison. The right-side blindness more than fixed. My eyes are working the way they used to before my cancer invasion.
A friend appears. “Well, JOE. Hey, what’s up? This can’t be the place where I belong. I don’t play golf. You know that.” Joe is carrying two golf bags, two full set of clubs, one over each shoulder. He beckons me to join him on the tee block.
I look down the long fairway: slight jog to the right about two-thirds distance to the hole. To me, the green feels as if it is a very long distance away. “Five par?” I ask.
“Nah. This one is a modest four par. How long has it been since you played a round?”
“Years and years. The clubs you left with me on long term loan are probably still in a crawl space making a home for spiders and mice.”
“Oh, Kent. That’s sad. Now we’re gonna play.”
“I think maybe the last time I attempted gowf might’ve been the day we did the four practice holes at The Old Works. Either that or I played nine with Bill at Anaconda Country Club.”
“Bill? Do I know him? I’ve known many Williams.”
“I don’t know. He lives in Opportunity. Just another friend. Bill tried to make me a golfer, too. He didn’t get very far either.”
“Who’s the best teacher, me or Bill?”
“My twist of the wrist is totally resistant to all good instruction or advice.”
“Let’s play 18. Then we’ll see.”
“18 holes? This could take me a week.”
“Nah. We’ll get it in before dark.”
“Does it ever get dark here?”
Joe didn’t answer; he merely shrugged and set his tee. His drive flew straight down the fairway about half the distance to the number one green. As he pulled the driver from my bag and handed me an orange ball and tee, he said, “See. It’s not such a long hole.”
I teed up, whacked the ball, topping it such that it skittered along the grass about twenty yards.
“Well, you’re still on the fairway, so that’s good,” Joe chuckled his encouraging word.
I managed to get my three wood to address the ball solidly, but with at wrist twist I found myself in a dense rough that only appeared when my ball sliced that way. “Where’d that Aspen grove come from? What kind of trickery is this?”
Joe shrugged again and laughed.
In that way, in my mythic whimsy dream, we played all eighteen holes. Joe played golf. I played goof. I stopped counting strokes after the fifth hole but my score for the day had to be over two hundred. I spent the day looking for my ball, Joe spent it helping me look and carefully watching my body language. After we finished all those meager golf strokes, a driving range appeared along with a large bucket of good quality golf balls. Joe gave me a couple good tips from his observations. I practiced and did a little better. Then we found our way to a small clubhouse, where we stored clubs in large lockers with our names on them—the only lockers in sight. As we drank a beer, an actual beer, and ate cheeseburgers, I asked, “You’re not really going to make a golfer out of me, are you? I mean, really, is there any hope.”
Joe murmured his answer. I heard what he said, although he spoke quietly. I touched my ears expecting to discover that my hearing aids had somehow come with me. Nope. I could hear again. Joe simply said, “We’ve got time.”
Memory takes me to a little daydream. An afterlife scene. Granted, whatever might or might not be beyond death, it cannot be like this. For a United Methodist minister, I’m rather agnostic about it. I do believe there is more to our lives and the kindom of God that Jesus offers transcends time and space. But it is about the way we ought to live in the here and now. My whimsy is mythic, taking earthly substance. Let’s admit it is too corporeal to be anything more than whimsical story. Then again, it is my daydream and I shall share it with you regardless.
~~~
I was remembering Randy “Joe” and his brain cancer struggles. So, let me tell you a bit about the friend I knew as Joe, although his name was Randy. Don’t ask me why he was Joe in our little circle. That’s just the way it was. Joe was the guy who got my jokes. I occasionally offered some bit of light humor within a Sunday sermon. Most of the folks in the pews would give me that look that says, “What’s he talking about now?” Joe would burst out laughing. I could love the guy for that alone. But there was so much more as he battled brain cancer while he kept on being Joe. He loved to lead games with the kids at our annual worship and picnic in Washoe Park. After he died, we named the event “The Randy Joe N___ Memorial Picnic.”
Joe was determined to teach me how to play a reasonable game of golf, in spite of the cancer that was gradually taking him down. So, we went golfing. Not yet fifty years old, seizures forced Joe to give up driving a car, so I would drive us out to the Country Club. Joe borrowed Sparky’s golf cart and, on the fairway, he had the fun of being in the driver’s seat again.
~~~
I’m thinking about life and death and brain cancer. Now that I know how nasty my tumors are, I dream a whimsy of something more, completely incomprehensible. My thoughts add a texture, an earthly reality to my picture of an Other Side. We know that Joe left this life when the cancer took it. His victory over the disease came with passing to that something beyond. It is not at all clear in my imagining whether my brain tumors will take me away, or something else. That doesn’t matter, anyway.
I dream my arrival at those pearly gates. Except there is no gate in my vision – only wide open, lightness of cloud and green grass. Green grass. A fairway. Tee blocks labeled “1” in front of me. A green with number flag is a reasonable distance off to my right. I see it clearly even in right peripheral vison. The right-side blindness more than fixed. My eyes are working the way they used to before my cancer invasion.
A friend appears. “Well, JOE. Hey, what’s up? This can’t be the place where I belong. I don’t play golf. You know that.” Joe is carrying two golf bags, two full set of clubs, one over each shoulder. He beckons me to join him on the tee block.
I look down the long fairway: slight jog to the right about two-thirds distance to the hole. To me, the green feels as if it is a very long distance away. “Five par?” I ask.
“Nah. This one is a modest four par. How long has it been since you played a round?”
“Years and years. The clubs you left with me on long term loan are probably still in a crawl space making a home for spiders and mice.”
“Oh, Kent. That’s sad. Now we’re gonna play.”
“I think maybe the last time I attempted gowf might’ve been the day we did the four practice holes at The Old Works. Either that or I played nine with Bill at Anaconda Country Club.”
“Bill? Do I know him? I’ve known many Williams.”
“I don’t know. He lives in Opportunity. Just another friend. Bill tried to make me a golfer, too. He didn’t get very far either.”
“Who’s the best teacher, me or Bill?”
“My twist of the wrist is totally resistant to all good instruction or advice.”
“Let’s play 18. Then we’ll see.”
“18 holes? This could take me a week.”
“Nah. We’ll get it in before dark.”
“Does it ever get dark here?”
Joe didn’t answer; he merely shrugged and set his tee. His drive flew straight down the fairway about half the distance to the number one green. As he pulled the driver from my bag and handed me an orange ball and tee, he said, “See. It’s not such a long hole.”
I teed up, whacked the ball, topping it such that it skittered along the grass about twenty yards.
“Well, you’re still on the fairway, so that’s good,” Joe chuckled his encouraging word.
I managed to get my three wood to address the ball solidly, but with at wrist twist I found myself in a dense rough that only appeared when my ball sliced that way. “Where’d that Aspen grove come from? What kind of trickery is this?”
Joe shrugged again and laughed.
In that way, in my mythic whimsy dream, we played all eighteen holes. Joe played golf. I played goof. I stopped counting strokes after the fifth hole but my score for the day had to be over two hundred. I spent the day looking for my ball, Joe spent it helping me look and carefully watching my body language. After we finished all those meager golf strokes, a driving range appeared along with a large bucket of good quality golf balls. Joe gave me a couple good tips from his observations. I practiced and did a little better. Then we found our way to a small clubhouse, where we stored clubs in large lockers with our names on them—the only lockers in sight. As we drank a beer, an actual beer, and ate cheeseburgers, I asked, “You’re not really going to make a golfer out of me, are you? I mean, really, is there any hope.”
Joe murmured his answer. I heard what he said, although he spoke quietly. I touched my ears expecting to discover that my hearing aids had somehow come with me. Nope. I could hear again. Joe simply said, “We’ve got time.”
December 23, 2018
PLUNK! – A Christmas Yarn
Plunk! Suddenly, The Boy (a little boy) was awake. The darkness that enveloped him felt like a moving presence. He shivered with fear. Or was it with anticipation? "It's Christmas! Is Santa Claus here?" He stood on his bed and peaked around the window shade, being careful not to let it roll up with a loud rattle.
Plunk! “What’s that noise? That’s what woke me up, I bet.” As he gazed through the winter- barren elm tree, a half-moon appeared and was quickly covered by cloud again. The wind howled, blowing through the branches of the big old tree. He looked for signs of flying reindeer. How can Santa land his sleigh? Maybe he came and went before the wind started to blow.
Plunk! “There it is again. Is that Santa? It sounds like bigfoot coming up the stairs. Or a reindeer. Hey, that’d be cool.”
Plunk! One thud at a time, a slow plod. Was it, whatever or whoever, coming after The Boy?
Plunk! “What is it?” He considered the possibilities. Everything he could imagine was frightening—except if it actually was Santa Claus. “Santa doesn’t make noise like that, does he?
“Dad and Mom will be mad if I wake them up in the middle of Christmas Eve night.” He tiptoed to the bedroom door and poked his nose into the hallway. No light shown under any door. “Nope, everyone else must be sleeping through the noise and Dad will grumble about how I always want to start Christmas too early.”
Plunk! The sound came louder at his open doorway.
***
Hours earlier the family had gathered beside the Christmas tree It was a big tree to fit the high ceiling. They’d cut it in the forest a few weeks before. Gift boxes were examined, tags read, and shaken. The Boy and The Sister Girls played a guessing game. The obvious book parcels called for a second level of guesswork. Yes, it’s a book, but what book?
Even though they’d all just come from the candlelight service at church, The Dad led the Family through one last Advent devotion with more candle lighting. Then The Mom opened a package given to her at church. She knew it was a sampler of chocolates. Everyone picked a piece. The Boy chose a dark one. It had coconut filling and he hated coconut. “Can I have another? I got stuck with coconut. Please, Mom?”
“Sorry. Luck of the draw. Now it’s time to get ready for bed.” She desperately wanted all children in bed so that Santa’s weary local helpers could complete their work.
The Boy dragged himself slowly up the stairs. The Mom tucked him in and turned out the light. He lay awake in the dark for a long time listening to his parents moving around downstairs.
Plunk! It didn’t seem as if he’d been asleep very long when that fearsome banging began. But it was very late. Lines from the poem his teacher had read at story time a few days earlier came to his mind. Not a creature was stirring…There arose such a clatter. “Is a clatter like that thudding noise? Is it almost morning? It sure is dark. The wee hours, Grandma calls it.” That made him think something else. He got up. To get to the bathroom he had to brave the hallway where the noise was louder. Awake at a wee hour, he really had to. Nothing attacked him on his way to or from the lavatory, so he tip-toed carefully to the top of the stairs. “Huh. No one there.” In the dim glow from the corner streetlight through the landing window he saw an empty stairway.
Plunk! The thudding noise came from downstairs. “It must be Santa Claus. But he’s taking an awful long time here, with gazillions of chimneys to crawl down.”
***
At that old house there was no worry that Santa would get stuck in the chimney. The fireplace was large; so was the chimney. One could worry that he might take the wrong flue and end up in the coal furnace, but Saint Nick is no fool. He’d certainly avoid the smoky duct. In the correct chimney there wasn’t even a damper to interfere with his descent. It was not known whether the chimney had been built without a damper, or if it had rusted away. Regardless, a damper did not exist, which meant that air heated by that coal furnace in the basement escaped by way of that chimney when the fireplace wasn’t in use. And that night it was not in use. The Boy reasoned that it was left cool to make it easier for Santa Claus.
***
Plunk! When will it stop? It can’t be Santa still, can it? No monster was on the stairs. “Maybe if I’m real quiet, I can peek through the bannister rails and see what’s up.”
Plunk! The noise came faster. The Boy looked up, through the tall window at the landing where the stairway turned. Small, leafless branches were blowing off the maple tree in the gale. Some hit against the house, but they didn’t make that thud noise. The Boy reached the landing and looked down into the living room. The lights on the Christmas tree had been left on, just this one night.
Plunk! “Aha! So that’s it!” The Boy said this out loud as he bounded the rest of the way downstairs. He pushed andirons against the plyboard cover so that it held the board tight against the bricks around the fireplace opening. The Dad had cut the board to fit over the curved opening to keep heat and the coal budget from going up the chimney. The wind had been alternately letting the board drop away a few inches against the andirons used to keep it in place, then sucking it back against the bricks with a thud, or PLUNK! The young Boy knew what to do because he got to help The Dad when they first put it up. “Maybe Santa couldn’t get the andirons back where they’re supposed to go from inside the fireplace. That’s probably why it was clunking in the wind.”
The Boy had a new worry as he tiptoed back to bed. “If I pretend I’m surprised when I see the sled in the morning, maybe Santa won’t know I saw it.” His head hit the pillow, kerplunk, and he dreamed of speeding down steep snowy hillsides on a flashy new Flexible Flyer sled.
Plunk! “What’s that noise? That’s what woke me up, I bet.” As he gazed through the winter- barren elm tree, a half-moon appeared and was quickly covered by cloud again. The wind howled, blowing through the branches of the big old tree. He looked for signs of flying reindeer. How can Santa land his sleigh? Maybe he came and went before the wind started to blow.
Plunk! “There it is again. Is that Santa? It sounds like bigfoot coming up the stairs. Or a reindeer. Hey, that’d be cool.”
Plunk! One thud at a time, a slow plod. Was it, whatever or whoever, coming after The Boy?
Plunk! “What is it?” He considered the possibilities. Everything he could imagine was frightening—except if it actually was Santa Claus. “Santa doesn’t make noise like that, does he?
“Dad and Mom will be mad if I wake them up in the middle of Christmas Eve night.” He tiptoed to the bedroom door and poked his nose into the hallway. No light shown under any door. “Nope, everyone else must be sleeping through the noise and Dad will grumble about how I always want to start Christmas too early.”
Plunk! The sound came louder at his open doorway.
***
Hours earlier the family had gathered beside the Christmas tree It was a big tree to fit the high ceiling. They’d cut it in the forest a few weeks before. Gift boxes were examined, tags read, and shaken. The Boy and The Sister Girls played a guessing game. The obvious book parcels called for a second level of guesswork. Yes, it’s a book, but what book?
Even though they’d all just come from the candlelight service at church, The Dad led the Family through one last Advent devotion with more candle lighting. Then The Mom opened a package given to her at church. She knew it was a sampler of chocolates. Everyone picked a piece. The Boy chose a dark one. It had coconut filling and he hated coconut. “Can I have another? I got stuck with coconut. Please, Mom?”
“Sorry. Luck of the draw. Now it’s time to get ready for bed.” She desperately wanted all children in bed so that Santa’s weary local helpers could complete their work.
The Boy dragged himself slowly up the stairs. The Mom tucked him in and turned out the light. He lay awake in the dark for a long time listening to his parents moving around downstairs.
Plunk! It didn’t seem as if he’d been asleep very long when that fearsome banging began. But it was very late. Lines from the poem his teacher had read at story time a few days earlier came to his mind. Not a creature was stirring…There arose such a clatter. “Is a clatter like that thudding noise? Is it almost morning? It sure is dark. The wee hours, Grandma calls it.” That made him think something else. He got up. To get to the bathroom he had to brave the hallway where the noise was louder. Awake at a wee hour, he really had to. Nothing attacked him on his way to or from the lavatory, so he tip-toed carefully to the top of the stairs. “Huh. No one there.” In the dim glow from the corner streetlight through the landing window he saw an empty stairway.
Plunk! The thudding noise came from downstairs. “It must be Santa Claus. But he’s taking an awful long time here, with gazillions of chimneys to crawl down.”
***
At that old house there was no worry that Santa would get stuck in the chimney. The fireplace was large; so was the chimney. One could worry that he might take the wrong flue and end up in the coal furnace, but Saint Nick is no fool. He’d certainly avoid the smoky duct. In the correct chimney there wasn’t even a damper to interfere with his descent. It was not known whether the chimney had been built without a damper, or if it had rusted away. Regardless, a damper did not exist, which meant that air heated by that coal furnace in the basement escaped by way of that chimney when the fireplace wasn’t in use. And that night it was not in use. The Boy reasoned that it was left cool to make it easier for Santa Claus.
***
Plunk! When will it stop? It can’t be Santa still, can it? No monster was on the stairs. “Maybe if I’m real quiet, I can peek through the bannister rails and see what’s up.”
Plunk! The noise came faster. The Boy looked up, through the tall window at the landing where the stairway turned. Small, leafless branches were blowing off the maple tree in the gale. Some hit against the house, but they didn’t make that thud noise. The Boy reached the landing and looked down into the living room. The lights on the Christmas tree had been left on, just this one night.
Plunk! “Aha! So that’s it!” The Boy said this out loud as he bounded the rest of the way downstairs. He pushed andirons against the plyboard cover so that it held the board tight against the bricks around the fireplace opening. The Dad had cut the board to fit over the curved opening to keep heat and the coal budget from going up the chimney. The wind had been alternately letting the board drop away a few inches against the andirons used to keep it in place, then sucking it back against the bricks with a thud, or PLUNK! The young Boy knew what to do because he got to help The Dad when they first put it up. “Maybe Santa couldn’t get the andirons back where they’re supposed to go from inside the fireplace. That’s probably why it was clunking in the wind.”
The Boy had a new worry as he tiptoed back to bed. “If I pretend I’m surprised when I see the sled in the morning, maybe Santa won’t know I saw it.” His head hit the pillow, kerplunk, and he dreamed of speeding down steep snowy hillsides on a flashy new Flexible Flyer sled.
December 9, 2018
“We have met the enemy and he is us.”
My op-ed piece on climate change, supporting a Green New Deal
Published in The Boulder Monitor Dec. 5, 2018
(Kent Elliott)
Editor added this note as introduction: “Green New Deal” is a proposal by a group fo U.S. House Democrats to create a committee to address “climate change with a plan to transition to 100 percent renewable energy for electricity. The proposal comes shortly after the release of a new federal study on the issue of climate change.
Making a Green New Deal our highest national priority is an opportunity to face the most momentous conflict of our time. Earth’s warming is so undeniable, denying it is horrendous sin.
“We have met the enemy and he is us.” The adage is as true now as it was on Earth Day 1970 when cartoonist Walt Kelly’s character Pogo said it.
And who are “we” in the saying? We are humanity, especially first world humanity. We are clearly the enemy of our own future (the “us” in the adage) on planet earth. I cannot overstate the urgency before us to make peace with Earth, our only home.
For years we have fiddled around while significant parts of our Earth burn or flood. We deny as storms come with ever greater intensity, with greater destructive power. Oceans are rising faster than worst case predictions of just a couple years ago. Even leaders who recognize this reality are still speaking of changes over the next few decades. I’m afraid we don’t have decades available to give today’s children a hopeful future. It is time now, nay, it was time yesterday to confront our prodigal way of life. Though still an idea and not yet concrete legislative proposals, a Green New Deal must be enacted that confronts every aspect of global warming now, in months not decades.
Methane is bursting into the atmosphere from melting Arctic permafrost. Delaying action for even a day exacerbates the warming from this powerful greenhouse gas. It brings us (us: enemy of our own future) quickly closer, if not already into, the positive feedback loop that makes warming unstoppable.
Oceans are growing more acidic, threatening complex sea life. Warming causes fish and other creatures to move into locations closer to the poles, changing the ecosystem’s balance. Ocean life is dying, heading toward extinctions, in unexpected ways.
If there is to be a habitable planet for our children and grandchildren; if Earth is to support their sources of food, potable water, or breathable air; if life forms more complex than cockroaches are to have a home on the orb that is our only home we have to surrender. Because we are the enemy of our own future, the planet has to defeat its enemy if we, the enemy, are to live.
We may have to face a drastically altered way of living if we are to sustain living at all. This, in a nutshell, means that we shift away from the fossil fuel economy with all deliberate (or faster?) speed. We shall either find ways to move about without reliance on petroleum or be forced to live within walking distance. Will we alter our lifestyles now, or wait for famine and extinction to do it for us?
In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the comic science fiction novelist Douglas Adams told us that the Guide’s notation about Earth’s sentient beings amounted to two words: “Mostly harmless.” I suspect that a revised edition would have to add, “except to themselves.” Must it be this way? Or can we learn and make the necessary changes before it’s too late? Wouldn’t “mostly harmless” be better than “mostly extinct”?
Let’s build support for a Green New Deal, urge our political leaders to act, and move into a sustainable economy. Let’s not continue to be our own worst enemy.
September 27, 2018
An early morning triggered memory
Wow! Triggers! Reports that trigger difficult memories fill this week’s news reporting.
Mine is not a #me too story. I’m an old hetero white man, so no. It is “she too” and my old, long unnoticed guilt feelings of the “if only” or “had I but known” variety. So, hear this trigger warning up top and decide whether you should read on. It is 4:30 in the morning and I cannot get back to sleep until I write this down.
We thought her big dog was protection. It was a fine, large hairy dog of some mix perhaps of collie and lab. Mixed breed at any rate, a good loyal beast to have at her side while on the road.
We were both in Billings. I don’t recall at what part of the cycle in our on-again-off-again relationship we were in that day, but we always friends. I was to go part of the way and she wanted to go to Kalispell. So, she and the dog that filled the back seat of my little car rode with me to Boulder. We had lunch and she went up to the highway for the hitchhiking part of her journey. Travel by extended thumb was not a new thing for her, or me. She’d hitched rides with some regularity. We’d done it together when we were both car-less and living in Boulder. And this time the dog was along.
I went to my work shift and she travelled on and that’s the last I knew until…
Some weeks or months later, back in Billings, I stopped to see my friend at her southside apartment. I’m pretty sure my intention for that visit was an attempt to bring our relationship back to an upward cycle romantically and possibly keep it there.
She had reported to authorities. Promptly. After barely escaping with her life. In our visit she told me about the rape with life-threatening violence she’d later endured on that day when we’d traveled together. It happened just a few miles out of Boulder. The rapist had been caught by the time of my visit. He was arrested after another sexual assault.
She trusted me enough to tell me what had happened. And I was dumbstruck, struck dumb and unable to offer a word. I had no comprehension of the overwhelming trauma that had changed every day of her life from that day forward. I had no ability to respond. It was long ago. My memory is dim and yet powerful. Did I withdraw? Was I unable to offer so much as a gentle hug, in fear that she would take that as a threat from any man after such an ordeal? I wasn’t helpful. She trusted, as much as she trusted her sister. But I wasn’t a sister or close female friend. I knew it was awful, but I couldn’t know as women know. My silent distance was betrayal by omission. I still don’t know what would have been the right thing to say or do, but my memory says it wasn’t enough. The guilt feelings come back across the years even as I realize there may not have been anything that could ever be enough. Telling me could not erase or move her out of darkness into a new dawn. It is no wonder many keep it hidden.
All I could think after her story began eventually to sink in was “if only”: If only I had taken another day off and gone with my friend and her dog to Kalispell. And then: Why couldn’t I be more helpful. I felt guilty for not being a very good friend, much less boyfriend.
Now a nominee for the Supreme Court and those who allege his assaults trigger these memories, and I wonder, “How is it with that onetime “She-too” friend today?” We’ve totally lost contact over the nearly half-century since.
My sleepless 4 AM remembering had begun with recollections of a couple times I got s***faced stumbling drunk in my young adulthood, in settings where attractive young women were present, and I didn’t try to rape any of them, nor did any of my inebriated male companions. That boastful memory of “didn’t rape” triggered the real rape memory. I think I’m mostly over my guilts. How is she coping in this week of triggering messages?
It isn’t universal. It is way, way too prevalent and persistent in our culture. Too much accepted by my male cohort; so very abusive of our male assumed power that there are far too many reasons that so much is kept hidden.
Mine is not a #me too story. I’m an old hetero white man, so no. It is “she too” and my old, long unnoticed guilt feelings of the “if only” or “had I but known” variety. So, hear this trigger warning up top and decide whether you should read on. It is 4:30 in the morning and I cannot get back to sleep until I write this down.
We thought her big dog was protection. It was a fine, large hairy dog of some mix perhaps of collie and lab. Mixed breed at any rate, a good loyal beast to have at her side while on the road.
We were both in Billings. I don’t recall at what part of the cycle in our on-again-off-again relationship we were in that day, but we always friends. I was to go part of the way and she wanted to go to Kalispell. So, she and the dog that filled the back seat of my little car rode with me to Boulder. We had lunch and she went up to the highway for the hitchhiking part of her journey. Travel by extended thumb was not a new thing for her, or me. She’d hitched rides with some regularity. We’d done it together when we were both car-less and living in Boulder. And this time the dog was along.
I went to my work shift and she travelled on and that’s the last I knew until…
Some weeks or months later, back in Billings, I stopped to see my friend at her southside apartment. I’m pretty sure my intention for that visit was an attempt to bring our relationship back to an upward cycle romantically and possibly keep it there.
She had reported to authorities. Promptly. After barely escaping with her life. In our visit she told me about the rape with life-threatening violence she’d later endured on that day when we’d traveled together. It happened just a few miles out of Boulder. The rapist had been caught by the time of my visit. He was arrested after another sexual assault.
She trusted me enough to tell me what had happened. And I was dumbstruck, struck dumb and unable to offer a word. I had no comprehension of the overwhelming trauma that had changed every day of her life from that day forward. I had no ability to respond. It was long ago. My memory is dim and yet powerful. Did I withdraw? Was I unable to offer so much as a gentle hug, in fear that she would take that as a threat from any man after such an ordeal? I wasn’t helpful. She trusted, as much as she trusted her sister. But I wasn’t a sister or close female friend. I knew it was awful, but I couldn’t know as women know. My silent distance was betrayal by omission. I still don’t know what would have been the right thing to say or do, but my memory says it wasn’t enough. The guilt feelings come back across the years even as I realize there may not have been anything that could ever be enough. Telling me could not erase or move her out of darkness into a new dawn. It is no wonder many keep it hidden.
All I could think after her story began eventually to sink in was “if only”: If only I had taken another day off and gone with my friend and her dog to Kalispell. And then: Why couldn’t I be more helpful. I felt guilty for not being a very good friend, much less boyfriend.
Now a nominee for the Supreme Court and those who allege his assaults trigger these memories, and I wonder, “How is it with that onetime “She-too” friend today?” We’ve totally lost contact over the nearly half-century since.
My sleepless 4 AM remembering had begun with recollections of a couple times I got s***faced stumbling drunk in my young adulthood, in settings where attractive young women were present, and I didn’t try to rape any of them, nor did any of my inebriated male companions. That boastful memory of “didn’t rape” triggered the real rape memory. I think I’m mostly over my guilts. How is she coping in this week of triggering messages?
It isn’t universal. It is way, way too prevalent and persistent in our culture. Too much accepted by my male cohort; so very abusive of our male assumed power that there are far too many reasons that so much is kept hidden.
April 20, 2017
Riverside Park in Miles City: A Highway 12 Memory
***
If you’re new here or haven’t visited recently, first scroll down & read the 1/30/2017 post “Introduction to Highway 12 Stories.” Recent stories and memories will make more sense if you do. I haven’t figured out a way to bump that post so that it stays on top.
***
Anxious to get off the Interstate, Barb and I take the first exit to Miles City, Montana. Arriving from the west, the route takes us through a couple miles of open country before we reach town, but this business route is old highway 12, two lane blacktop with narrow grassy shoulders taking us away from I-94/US10&12. We pass the fish hatchery and the agricultural research station at Fort Keogh. We reach town where the first big thing is the Range Riders Museum spread wide on the north side of Main Street. We cross the Tongue River and come immediately to our favorite Miles City summer hangout. On the south side of the street is Riverside Park and the Natural Oasis. We’ll stop here for a bit.
Yes! Let’s refresh and relax. We have swimsuits along, so why not? This is our favorite park because of the pond—especially the pond. The Miles City Swimming Pool is a pond, a diversion reservoir filled from the Tongue River. It is large enough and river water flowing through keeps it fairly clean—with a boost of chlorine tossed in now and then for appearance’s sake.
From the car we pull our sports duffels with our swimming gear out of the pile of travel stuff. We pay the fee and sign in. The young lifeguard at the desk looks as if she could be related to the family that ran things back when we spent many summer hours at Riverside Park. The family who ran things. Hmm, I remember the grandpa’s name, but not his daughter who had been manager. Grandpa Dave, as retired manager, focused on keeping Amateur Athletic Union programs alive and on the politics involved in preserving this outdoor swimming pond. The large pond was great for summer, but his advocacy also kept the town from building a year round facility.
Well, that’s old politics. Let’s enjoy the water and sun on this summer visit. We’re far from the good physical shape we brought to the pool our first summer here, many years ago. Let’s just see how far we can swim between the docks, fifty meters each way.
Swimming back and forth, stopping to rest more often than I care to admit, I drift into a reverie of memories: Of our kids competing on the swim team, of helping at meets, of finger Jello at the team parents’ concession stand. It all comes back to mind. Especially I recall our first AAU competition weekend a month after we’d moved to town.
In my daydream state I’d managed four slow laps since my last breather, so I deserved a rest. It was easy to convince myself of this. I paddled down to shallower water, pulled myself up onto the dock, and sat looking out over the pond. I heard a voice behind me. Turning, I saw a vaguely familiar looking tanned face (but deeply wrinkled now) under pure white hair cut short. She wore shorts and t-shirt over her black tank suit and a whistle hung from a lanyard around her neck. She said, “Not like the old days for us, I guess. You’re not doing the poles like you used to. I don’t manage it very often anymore myself.” She had to repeat all of this because, of course, I wasn’t wearing my hearing aids in the water. I mumbled something inane about being out of shape and admitted, “I don’t remember your name.”
She told me her name. I either didn’t hear or promptly forgot.
I did hear her say, “I only recognize you because your wife and I were just talking about old times. How long has it been?”
“It’s been a long time. We moved away from here in what? ’89? I think that’s right.”
Her attention suddenly turned to some roughhousing kids and I slid back into the water and my reverie.
With soreness in my muscles returning before I reached the other dock, my daydream took me back in time to the long swim. “Doing the poles” as Wussername the senior-citizen lifeguard or pool manager put it. Not between docks, no pushing off every fifty meters, but around the poles, out beyond the docks and diving boards.
Three large white painted steel posts stand in a line poking through the water of the larger pond area, one hundred meters apart, two hundred meters end to end. The center pole is easiest to reach from the swimming area marked by the docks, so we’d start there. One circuit is four hundred meters. Four times around is about a mile. Sixteen circuits is a long way. That was our goal on that day so long ago.
We’d been swimming a mile every morning since the new indoor pool in our former town opened six months earlier. In the best physical shape of my life, or close enough to it, I was ready to try. Now I’m a fat old man, pushing off from the dock and panting before I reach the other side at a sluggish pace.
On that warm, sunny Sunday in July 1984, I was doubtful I could do it, but intent on trying to accomplish the marathon swim. We bunched up at the center pole. Dave, the AAU’s top promoter, signaled the start and we were off. I swam the first mile at my usual early morning pace, and maintained pretty well for the next half mile. Every twenty-five meters I recalled the clear pool in Baker and longed for the chance to push off and coast for a couple meters. Still, I plugged along.
More than two hours later there were only two or three of us in the pond. I came past the center pole and heard the yelling and cheering. I had completed the four mile swim. Barb came in a few minutes later. We had both done it! The whole shebang. A marathon in murky water.
Exhausted and sunburnt (Oh my gawd, the sunburn.) I hung on the end of the dock just breathing until some helpful hands pulled me up and out. Most swimmers had given up before the three mile mark, but I wasn’t the first to finish the full race. Even so, I was in for another surprise. Dave presented me with a gilded medal. First place Junior Champion. Not only first in Miles City, I was national marathon swim champ in the men’s junior division. I told Dave I was too old to be junior. He reasoned that I won in that division because I’d never competed before. Barb won the Women’s Junior. We had matching medals. National champions – because Miles City did the USA’s only AAU marathon swim contest. I’d show you the medal but it was attached to my sports duffle that was stolen a few years later.
The next year, without access to year round swimming, I only made two and a half miles. Only? Hey I did doggone well that time, too.
Now, back for a visit at the Natural Oasis, I’m swimming and remembering. Starting to find a sustainable pace. Maybe I’ll go once around the poles for old times’ sake, if Ms. Wussername will allow it.
Soon we’ll be back out on Highway 12 crossing open country, full of life but empty of people. As we reach the Strawberry Hills a road sign warns us, “Next gas 83 miles.” Next public pool, where we got in marathon shape, is also 83 miles; that information wasn’t on the sign.
If you’re new here or haven’t visited recently, first scroll down & read the 1/30/2017 post “Introduction to Highway 12 Stories.” Recent stories and memories will make more sense if you do. I haven’t figured out a way to bump that post so that it stays on top.
***
Anxious to get off the Interstate, Barb and I take the first exit to Miles City, Montana. Arriving from the west, the route takes us through a couple miles of open country before we reach town, but this business route is old highway 12, two lane blacktop with narrow grassy shoulders taking us away from I-94/US10&12. We pass the fish hatchery and the agricultural research station at Fort Keogh. We reach town where the first big thing is the Range Riders Museum spread wide on the north side of Main Street. We cross the Tongue River and come immediately to our favorite Miles City summer hangout. On the south side of the street is Riverside Park and the Natural Oasis. We’ll stop here for a bit. Yes! Let’s refresh and relax. We have swimsuits along, so why not? This is our favorite park because of the pond—especially the pond. The Miles City Swimming Pool is a pond, a diversion reservoir filled from the Tongue River. It is large enough and river water flowing through keeps it fairly clean—with a boost of chlorine tossed in now and then for appearance’s sake.
From the car we pull our sports duffels with our swimming gear out of the pile of travel stuff. We pay the fee and sign in. The young lifeguard at the desk looks as if she could be related to the family that ran things back when we spent many summer hours at Riverside Park. The family who ran things. Hmm, I remember the grandpa’s name, but not his daughter who had been manager. Grandpa Dave, as retired manager, focused on keeping Amateur Athletic Union programs alive and on the politics involved in preserving this outdoor swimming pond. The large pond was great for summer, but his advocacy also kept the town from building a year round facility.
Well, that’s old politics. Let’s enjoy the water and sun on this summer visit. We’re far from the good physical shape we brought to the pool our first summer here, many years ago. Let’s just see how far we can swim between the docks, fifty meters each way.
Swimming back and forth, stopping to rest more often than I care to admit, I drift into a reverie of memories: Of our kids competing on the swim team, of helping at meets, of finger Jello at the team parents’ concession stand. It all comes back to mind. Especially I recall our first AAU competition weekend a month after we’d moved to town.
In my daydream state I’d managed four slow laps since my last breather, so I deserved a rest. It was easy to convince myself of this. I paddled down to shallower water, pulled myself up onto the dock, and sat looking out over the pond. I heard a voice behind me. Turning, I saw a vaguely familiar looking tanned face (but deeply wrinkled now) under pure white hair cut short. She wore shorts and t-shirt over her black tank suit and a whistle hung from a lanyard around her neck. She said, “Not like the old days for us, I guess. You’re not doing the poles like you used to. I don’t manage it very often anymore myself.” She had to repeat all of this because, of course, I wasn’t wearing my hearing aids in the water. I mumbled something inane about being out of shape and admitted, “I don’t remember your name.”
She told me her name. I either didn’t hear or promptly forgot.
I did hear her say, “I only recognize you because your wife and I were just talking about old times. How long has it been?”
“It’s been a long time. We moved away from here in what? ’89? I think that’s right.”
Her attention suddenly turned to some roughhousing kids and I slid back into the water and my reverie.
With soreness in my muscles returning before I reached the other dock, my daydream took me back in time to the long swim. “Doing the poles” as Wussername the senior-citizen lifeguard or pool manager put it. Not between docks, no pushing off every fifty meters, but around the poles, out beyond the docks and diving boards.
Three large white painted steel posts stand in a line poking through the water of the larger pond area, one hundred meters apart, two hundred meters end to end. The center pole is easiest to reach from the swimming area marked by the docks, so we’d start there. One circuit is four hundred meters. Four times around is about a mile. Sixteen circuits is a long way. That was our goal on that day so long ago.
We’d been swimming a mile every morning since the new indoor pool in our former town opened six months earlier. In the best physical shape of my life, or close enough to it, I was ready to try. Now I’m a fat old man, pushing off from the dock and panting before I reach the other side at a sluggish pace.
On that warm, sunny Sunday in July 1984, I was doubtful I could do it, but intent on trying to accomplish the marathon swim. We bunched up at the center pole. Dave, the AAU’s top promoter, signaled the start and we were off. I swam the first mile at my usual early morning pace, and maintained pretty well for the next half mile. Every twenty-five meters I recalled the clear pool in Baker and longed for the chance to push off and coast for a couple meters. Still, I plugged along.
More than two hours later there were only two or three of us in the pond. I came past the center pole and heard the yelling and cheering. I had completed the four mile swim. Barb came in a few minutes later. We had both done it! The whole shebang. A marathon in murky water.
Exhausted and sunburnt (Oh my gawd, the sunburn.) I hung on the end of the dock just breathing until some helpful hands pulled me up and out. Most swimmers had given up before the three mile mark, but I wasn’t the first to finish the full race. Even so, I was in for another surprise. Dave presented me with a gilded medal. First place Junior Champion. Not only first in Miles City, I was national marathon swim champ in the men’s junior division. I told Dave I was too old to be junior. He reasoned that I won in that division because I’d never competed before. Barb won the Women’s Junior. We had matching medals. National champions – because Miles City did the USA’s only AAU marathon swim contest. I’d show you the medal but it was attached to my sports duffle that was stolen a few years later.
The next year, without access to year round swimming, I only made two and a half miles. Only? Hey I did doggone well that time, too.
Now, back for a visit at the Natural Oasis, I’m swimming and remembering. Starting to find a sustainable pace. Maybe I’ll go once around the poles for old times’ sake, if Ms. Wussername will allow it.
Soon we’ll be back out on Highway 12 crossing open country, full of life but empty of people. As we reach the Strawberry Hills a road sign warns us, “Next gas 83 miles.” Next public pool, where we got in marathon shape, is also 83 miles; that information wasn’t on the sign.
March 13, 2017
My Lolo Move
***If you’re new here or haven’t visited recently, first scroll down & read the 1/30/2017 post “Introduction to Highway 12 Stories.” Recent stories and memories will make more sense if you do.
***
“You’ll have the car loaded to the gills. Don’t take Lolo Pass. It’ll be better to go around by Spokane,” Dad advised.
I was on the phone from Forest Grove, Oregon telling Mom and Dad in Billings about a job bringing me back to Montana. After I had told them that I saw it as a job while I look for a career, and heard Dad’s advice, I said, “I can’t get all my stuff into Red Ronnie Renault. I tried to rent of a small van, but the rental trucks are piling up in Montana, so there’s a surcharge.” The extra fee made it too costly for me. Still, I was relieved Dad didn’t offer to help. I could abandon the beat-up desk I’d bought for fifteen dollars and painted orange. Even so, it might require two car trips.
I just mentioned Red Ronnie. That was my French import sports coupe – a 1972 Renault R-15; front wheel drive at a time when few models were, it was also low slung and handled great on curves. Under the hood was an energetic high compression four cylinder engine. The hatch back provided limited but useable cargo space. And it was red. Dad had never seen it. To him Renault meant a little R-10, the model he drove.
“Well Dad, I’m pretty sure those tight turns on Lolo Pass were made for the R-15.” That was the car’s point of view in the debate. It had told me so while driving back roads between Forest Grove and the coast.
Dad’s point of view confused me. Lolo is the route stretching US 12 the rest of the way west, from Missoula through Walla Walla and on to the Pacific at Aberdeen, Washington. It is that completion through the Bitterroot Mountains that allows me to claim that I grew up along 12. Dad grew up on old US12 in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Without fail, when he traveled from Billings to Helena or Missoula, he chose to go the extra back road miles, up Zimmerman Trail to the top of the rimrocks and north to 12 west at Lavina. He always preferred US12 across Montana through tiny communities that even in their long ago heydays were one-horse towns.
Now that I’m trying to tell Highway 12 stories from memory and imagination, I’ve come to believe there is a connection in his affection for that route that comes from his growing up on Third Street/US12. Across Montana he preferred 12. In Washington, he liked to drive what is now 12 past the Boise Cascade pulp mill on the Columbia River. Dad would inhale deeply as we rode along the river at Wallula Gap. Then he’d breathe out and announce to moaning disagreement from the back seat, “Smells like home.”
Is this my Dad? Is he really saying, “Do not use Highway 12?”
The Renault 15 much preferred mountain driving over city traffic. Getting through Portland might be enough to convince me to avoid Spokane. All I could say to Dad was, “Maybe you’re right. I’ll see how it goes, Dad.”
“Just be careful, Son.” Parents tend to say that a lot, don’t they.
I started packing. I shook my head and said to the boxes, “It’s gonna take two trips at least. And that’s with “Elliott Packing” (a story for another day; a tightly packed story filling every space). The orange desk wouldn’t fit, but I had built the orange bookcase such that it could be disassembled. The planks would ride shotgun with the seat reclined.
With the car stuffed full, I departed with load one. Forest Grove is a hundred miles from our US12 theme highway. I wouldn’t encounter any hint of it as I drove through the Columbia Gorge on the Oregon side. My choice for mountain crossing, 12 or I-90, could be delayed until Umatilla. From there I could cross the mighty river to the Tri-Cities and drive through the Columbia Basin desert or I could stay on the Oregon side for a few more miles to Wallula Junction and US12, The Highway of My Life. I mumbled to the load around me, “Shall I follow Dad’s recommendation? Or, will I go where Red Ronnie Renault is hip to rally?”
Red Ronnie swerved a little as I checked mirrors for a lane change. Something in the load squeaked an answer to my question, “Wawa wawa.”
At the junction in Umatilla the sign said left to Kennewick and Spokane. I murmured, “Why Kennewick and not Pasco? Pasco’s more my kind of town.” There was a semi waiting in the left turn lane anyway, so I barreled straight ahead. “I can still head for Spokane from Wallula junction,” I grunted. The load squeaked again.
At Wallula, of course, the signs let me know that US730 would become US12 East by going straight; or turn left to US12 West for connections to Spokane. But, gosh, my destination was east. Well, my criminal experience to that point was negligible, but I determined to go straight anyway. Onward to Walla Walla, my home town, and thence to Lolo, the avoidable mountain road. Of course we all know which I chose; we read the title.
With gas tank refilled and a quick tour through the old neighborhood, Red Ronnie was ready to roll on into the night. I wasn’t. After supper at a fast food joint on East Isaacs Street (Business 12 in Walla Walla) I camped at the little state park near Waitsburg, honoring family picnic traditions or some such. Starting very early the next morning I traversed the hillside wheat fields of home and made my way up the Clearwater River into the mountains. The Renault glided through the US12 curves. A few times, because the load was heavy and the grade was steep, I’d downshift as I eased into the curve, and punch up the RPMs as I pulled through. Among the big trees of the dense forest with sudden openings to grand vistas, slowing to go up and around was pure joy. Yeah, the car and I enjoyed the drive, so I stuck with US12 and MacDonald Pass to Helena. Along the Little Blackfoot River and up the west side, waving at the rest area where we’d had the camping trailer wreck a few years earlier, then through forest from the continental divide down into the valley, the sporty Renault didn’t let me down. I didn’t know then what the top of the divide on US12 would mean to me a few years later.
Twenty-six miles from US12 I came to Boulder and a small apartment complex where I filled out forms in case I qualified for rent subsidy. I refused to pay the damage deposit before a plumbing problem was resolved. I stayed for a week learning about my new job, sleeping on the floor, and making do. Even though I’d worked at Boulder River School & Hospital before, with only a year away to finish college (finally), I still had to endure pre-service training for two weeks. Friday’s class wrapped up early and I set out for Oregon and the other load. I heard Dad’s advice in my head, and figured, “Why not? I may as well see if he’s right about which route is better for the other load.”
I stuck with US12 over MacDonald Pass and I-90 that’s also US10 & 12 to Missoula. From there I stayed on the Interstate this time. It was getting dark when I began to notice that I was leaving the Big Sky as I neared Lookout Pass and Idaho. Clouds hovered close and rain had begun to fall somewhere west of St. Regis. Then came the warning signs: “ROAD WORK NEXT 10 MILES” “EXPECT DELAYS” “FLAGMAN AHEAD”.
I pulled off the highway at Saltese, where the construction zone began. I exited because I saw, in the distance ahead, a white pickup truck with a flashing yellow light and sign with large letters, “PILOT CAR |FOLLOW ME.” I was too tired for this in the chilly drizzle. I managed to get a room, which must have been the last available, in a dumpy old motel. The room had large draped picture windows and a wall furnace that sort of worked now and then. Looking around, I realized that this room had once been a gas station office. Beyond the big window was an open roofed area where the pumps used to be.
Hunger had me out looking around the tiny town. I found the saloon, got a beer and sandwich, and marveled at the array of punchboards propped on the bar. Above the back bar was a display of the prizes the punchboards could bring, except that winners opted for cash if no suspicious strangers where present. This was at a time when gambling was so completely illegal in Montana and the Attorney General so rigid that he busted church basement bingo and charity raffles. The Saltese Bar seemed unaffected, however, if a bit anachronistic in its gambling style. I thought, “This town belongs on old US12, not I-90.”
In the morning, under a bright blue big sky, I followed the pilot car through the mud, more alert even without breakfast—I’d find that and coffee at Wallace on the Idaho side. Coming out of the work zone I considered, “That wasn’t so bad, but there wasn’t any construction over Lolo.” Two signs, “Welcome to Idaho” and “End Road Work” greeted me along with the sudden appearance of low clouds and mist. “Huh. So long, Big Sky. We leave you at the state line.”
Just after a fuel stop at Post Falls I picked up a hitchhiker and was immediately taught something about not answering questions. He jumped in, dropped the backpack at his feet, and immediately asked, “How far ya goin’?”
Without thinking, I answered, “Portland. Where’re you headed?”
“Oregon coast works for me just fine,” he said, adding a grin and a wink.
I learned that one should avoid the straight answer to this question. Leave an option to dump a rider, lie if necessary. He wasn’t unpleasant or threatening, just fidgety with a constant stream of nonsense talk. I guessed he was either bi-polar manic or amped on uppers. He offered nothing, no suggestion of a stop to get us a sandwich. Nothing. So I drove. Oh, we may have stopped at a rest area once. Red Ronnie could go 450 miles on a tank of high-test, so I drove; listening to the radio while he blathered. Eventually he began to doze now and then—maybe the drugs were wearing off. That gave me a little relief. In the evening, along US26 in the suburbs west of Portland I let him go, filled the empty gas tank, and took back roads to Forest Grove.
At the house I loaded my remaining stuff worth keeping into Red Ronnie and napped for five or six hours on the bed I’d be leaving behind. The return trip had to be accomplished in one day, definitely via Lolo Pass. On short sleep and an early start, the mountain drive was good for keeping me alert. After I followed all the US12 signs through Missoula I was on cruise control, not the car, only the driver. The Renault didn’t have that feature.
I was so close, driving tired, but so near my destination. What is it about the stretch of highway between Garrison and Avon? Is it out to get me? I had just passed the rest area where Dad and I endured the camper collision when I hit a small fallen rock and popped a tire. Tires conspire, too. They prefer to go flat when the spare is buried under a couple cubic yards of baggage. So, I unloaded onto the grassy shoulder, figured out the jack, was greatly relieved that the spare had good pressure, reloaded and drove wide awake, fully alert the last seventy miles.
I was hauling the last of my belongings up the stairs to my second floor apartment when I abruptly discovered that I needed to find a place to live with a different landlord.
I considered alternatives. Should I find an apartment in Helena, or possibly East Helena out near Highway 12? I did better; after a couple weeks of scouting around I found ‘Sullie’, landlord from my previous sojourn in Boulder. He had a studio in his triplex that came with a bed and odd furnishings, so I didn’t have to live at his Valley Apts.
Red Ronnie Renault, the sport coupe, did not care for the triplex. It often refused to start in pleasant weather. I reckon it wanted to get back out on Highway 12, not short hops to work, Streib’s Grocery or the Owl Bar.
***
Comments/critiques on these stories are welcome. I’ve been working with the assumption that these tidbits are not up to a personal standard for publishing them in a book. I read them and get editing help from the writing group and one member says there should be a book. I say this to encourage honest feedback.
***
January 30, 2017
INTRODUCTION TO HIGHWAY TWELVE STORIES
On the story blog at Wheatgrass for the next little while in 2017 I'm posting some little stories -- reminiscences, fictions, or both. I'm having some fun with it, but not expecting to complete a collection of publish worthy quality. Its easternmost point is Detroit, Michigan. US12 winds through the northern states westward to Aberdeen, Washington on North Bay (the Pacific Ocean). Now it reaches the coast. It wasn’t always so, in the history of United States highways. It has moved, or its signs have adopted changed routes over the years. For most of its two-lane blacktop life its western terminus was Missoula, Montana.
Why should I care about that? Well, you see, when I was growing up in the 1950s, I attended Green Park Elementary School on Route 12, aka East Isaacs Street. At that time the signs read US410. In 1967, the upgrade of Lolo Pass extended Route 12 through Idaho. 410 became 12. By then I was a sophomore at Pacific University, a hundred miles from the nearest connection to the newly designated route. Route 12 now follows a bypass route around Walla Walla.
I count it anyway, not only because so much of my life has been in close proximity to the Twelve, but also because it goes back for generations. My Highway 12 stories can include Wisconsin grandparents who lived where the headlights of cars coming into town on Truax shone into their front windows as the cars followed the highway’s bend into Third Street when we visited. When my father was growing up, they lived a block up the Third Street, right there on old Highway 12.
It’s also a current family thing. One sibling has for years lived a few blocks from US12 (now also with some ‘I’ number) in the Twin Cities . If we were to include Twelve’s sister highway, US212, there’d be more family connection. But we’d have to throw in US2, just because. So, forget all that. These are my stories from my entire life lived within a hundred miles of US12, except for fewer than five years when I eluded its grip.
