I REMEMBER...Stonehenge

...traveling to England in the late 70's and going to see Stonehenge. This is a short observation about how really small the world is and a small moment in time for me.

Backing up a bit...

A few years earlier, I had opened a leather and jewelry store in Chico called Lone Eagle Leather. The night of my grand opening, I had an open bar, a lot of friends and a band playing. As a gift to the guys in the band, I made custom leather belts with the name of their band stamped in the back. Store worked great - an awesome time to be in the crafts business, I expanded to a second store, and then a wholesale leathergoods business as well. I had accounts with the Tower Records chain and the CSU college bookstores throughout California. I was a madman and worked far too much and burned out.

Friends threw me a birthday party on my 28th birthday and put 35 candles on it. A subtle hint I should slow down and take a break. Sold the business, bought a houseboat, put my house up for sale and temporarily "moved" to Jamaica. This is another blog, and the mention here is meant only to show some passage of time.

Came back to town, worked as a carpenter and burned out again (hmmmm...is there a pattern here?).

When I was 30, I went to Europe and stayed in England for awhile and managed to make it out to Stonehenge for the day. A rare sunny day (see me in red tank top in one of the photos). So, I am walking up to the stone pillars approaching the crowd already gathered there for a history lecture being given by one of the caretakers. As I walk up , I see at the back of the crowd, a tall guy (see pic of guy in white pants and white shirt at the back of the crowd with his hands on his hips) that stunned me. Here I am many miles and years away from the Grand Opening of Lone Eagle Leather in Chico, California, and there in front of me is one of the band members wearing my custom made belt. Turns out he was traveling with his dad and was only going to be there for a half hour (a tiny moment in time). I never would have seen it if I had been earlier, later, walked slower or had been less observant.

I am fascinated with time. The time we have, the time we don't have and how little moments in time have special value. This was one of those special moments.

Quote of the day:

Time is the coin of life. It’s the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful, lest you let others spend it for you. .....Carl Sandburg

I REMEMBER...best birthdays

...perhaps one of the best birthdays ever (and it hasn't even happened yet - technically it is this coming Monday). This time last year I was very ill, had just finished chemo and had three more radiation treatments to go. I took a week off work last week before she started 6th grade and spent it with my 11 year old daughter going to movies, bowling, miniature golfing, a day at a waterpark, making tie-dye tee shirts, lunch and breakfast out every day...we were having so much fun that Lise took two days off and we went to San Francisco for two days - stayed right at Fisherman's Wharf, ate great seafood, bought souvenirs - bought a family pass to the Science & History Museum AND THEN we drove up the coast to Windsor - stayed with my sister and went for a Hot Air Balloon Ride capped off with a quiche/chocolate dipped strawberries/champagne brunch in the vineyards of Kendall-Jackson Winery....and just when you think there is no more room for icing...I got my clean PET/Scan results back before we left on the trip and my clean slate CT Scan from the doctor's today.

This time last year I could hardly keep food down. lost a lot of weight and hadn't even hit the hard part yet...didn't get the feeding tube installed until after treatment ended. My blog entry for this date last year:

August 25, 2998
Finished my last chemo today. This is the good news. Was not able to do my radiation today because both machines were down. The bad news. I was disappointed. I go to my regular radiation tomorrow at 3:15, and if the machines are working all week, will do the 4 of the last 5 this week and then the very last one the day after the Labor Day weekend.

Lise was sweet enough to take the whole day off work, and it turns out we were not able to have the radiation in the morning. And the chemo ran late. She had to drive all the way across town to pick Sarah up from school then come back to pick me up.

Having chemo adds more pills to the mix--more than my little daily containers can hold. The next three days will be pills, pills and more pills. I'm sure most of the pills I'm taking cause constipation, so I'm having to take two or three pills to work it in reverse. No pun intended. Just a minor trial in the list of tribulations I'm encountering.

Song of the Day: Start Me Up - The Rolling Stones (Stop Me Up)

Thanks to my sister Sharon and my niece Erica for the never-ending flow of fabulous get-well cards. There was a new twist in the card from my sister today. It was a picture of a "freak cod," a.k.a. Greek god, reminding me that I will always be older than her.

My blog has now gotten a comment from somebody in India. It's now truly an international blog. Ha.

I REMEMBER...going to Istanbul

...going to Istanbul, Turkey in the 70's. This is the place you literally can cross from West to East. There is a poem by Rudyard Kipling called the The Ballad of East and West - Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) where the famous line is penned: "OH, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet"...but it is not true. The bridge over the Bosphorus in Istanbul, provides the solution. The Bosphorus is the 32 km (20-mi)-long strait which joins the Sea of Marmara with the Black Sea in Istanbul, and separates the continents of Europe and Asia. I walked across the bridge to just beyond the halfway point to say that I had been to the East, and then came back.

I spent several days there in a youth Hostel (that required by health concerns and common sense to wear your shoes in the communal hostel shower...I have been in slime covered creeks with a more secure footing). Met lots of young people coming and going to Asia, etc. Istanbul was the jumping off place for travelers to the East. Fantastic stories from some very interesting people.

I was fortunate to see the magical Blue Mosque and Topkapi Palace ( where you get to see all the world's great artifacts stolen by the Ottoman empire - much like the London Museum to see all the great treasures stolen by the English Empire and The Vatican's collection of great treasures stolen by the Roman Empire). There are many gold covered items, thrones, etc. encrusted with diamonds and emeralds..it is almost unbelievable. The famous gold, diamond and emerald dagger is perhaps one of the most famous blings in history.

My most memorable experience, however was experiencing a real "Turkish Bath".... a lavish, marble palace devoted to a steam room, dressing room and open public bath ( this one for Turkish businessmen) - where a huge bald Turk (big mustache - probably about 6'2"- 280 lbs) "bathed you' with a sponge made of some very coarse seaweed or straw and lye soap from head to toe. As I am just 5'7", 140lbs - I was a "compliant" customer...even when the $3 purchased bath experience included having the attendant walk on your back...I could hardly breathe. An incredible experience (living through it was half the pleasure) with only one downside (no, it had nothing to do with Turkish prisons as this was a public bath). I had just traveled to Istanbul from spending a month on a little Greek Island, spending my days drinking wine and developing the best tan I ever had. The 1/2 hour experience of being scrubbed with a wet, rough wad of straw and lye soap by a Turkish linebacker left me with one less layer of skin and produced a baby pink version of my former self. I felt like a boiled rubber band and looked like a baby hairless Chihuahua...but I was cool and could now say - "Been There - Done That".

I REMEMBER...my first motorcycle

...my first MOTORCYCLE I bought...I had paid my parents $500 for one of the family cars when I went off to Chico State College in 1965. About 1967 I had a falling out with my step-dad over my off-campus living arrangements and his ultimatum was to change my lifestyle or the college money would be cut off. It is hard for a 19 year old to change his new found freedom and cool lifestyle...so I opted for the latter and immediately entered the full-time job market (and continued going to school full time). Housing was pretty cheap in those days, but minimum wage was $1.40/hr., so it was a struggle. The family car I referred to earlier was a 1965 Rambler American and not as cool as the image I wanted for myself. A few paychecks later and a trade-in garnered me my cool YAMAHA 125 cc motorcycle and a small(understatement)house in an alley in Chico. Went on to own many bikes including a 350cc Honda off-road bike and my beloved BSA 441 [chocolate and chrome- tear drop tank, butterfly handlebars, extended front forks...just like easy-rider. It weighed more than I did and I had a devil of a time keeping it upright when I came to a stop..ha].

I REMEMBER...4th of July & fireworks

…the 4^th of July [unsafe and insane method] when I was a kid. Not much has changed except that fireworks were cheaper and more spectacular when I was a kid [or it seems in my memory banks]. This year, I took my daughter Sarah [age 10…almost 11] to the fireworks stand to buy fireworks for our 4^th celebrations. Every 4^th has to have sparklers, regardless of the age of the revelers. When we asked for sparklers, we were told: “Those are illegal, we only have Morning Glories".

Wikipedia: “Sparklers, or hand-held fireworks, are a popular part of many Fourth of July celebrations, and a familiar cause of injuries, particularly in little children. More accidents are caused by sparklers than any other fireworks”…internet July 2009.

The main difference that I can see between the two is the metal core on the sparkler vs. a wood core on the Morning Glory and the sparklers lasted longer with a bigger shower of sparks. Today, when you were done with the “sparklers,” you put them into a bucket of water…very safe, very sane. When I was a kid in Oklahoma, with cherry bombs, ladyfingers, bottle rockets, roman candles, real sparklers, etc., we must have practiced the unsafe and insane method. I can’t tell you how many times I stepped barefoot on a fiery hot metal sparkler someone threw into the grass (all small children in Oklahoma, back in the day were not required to wear shoes until school started in September (except for Sunday school).

SIDE NOTE: the freshly tarred road in front of our house was a great playground, running around barefoot and popping hot tar bubbles with your toes. The downside of this Midwest traditional 50’s kid’s activity is that you had to sit still while your mom scrubbed your tarred feet with gasoline or kerosene to get them clean. We didn’t have cell phones or pagers or wear watches to tell time. After dinner, we could play outside until the street lights came on; that was the signal to go home. We loved to watch the bats swoop in and out around the street lights sucking up mosquitoes and bugs. I used to play in the ditch across the street often and even caught a baby cottonmouth water moccasin (rattler) and put it into a glass mason jar and freaked my Mom out…I got strict orders not to do that again.

I REMEMBER...Christmas morning and the fireplace

...some great Christmas morning stories. I unearthed a stash of 8mm tapes from "back in the day" when Sarah (now 10) was a baby and the brothers were in their teens. One of the best stories we relayed in one tape doesn't revolve around presents, but an incident one Christmas morning when the boys were small and we lived in South Natomas.

That was before we got the "permanent - almost life-like, already-has-light-strands-on- it Christmas tree." We had a 1 and 1/2 story living room and as a result, had a huge 12' real pine tree that year. We were cleaning up and took the tree out to the street for refuse pick-up. We had gotten the tree early in the season and it had dried out considerably, leaving a trail of dried pine needles everywhere.

So, this particular Christmas morning, I swept them all up and stuffed them in a big paper grocery bag. The garbage can was already full of paper and boxes and had I had no place to put the pine needles. Then I spied the fireplace. "Why not?" I had been camping before...should be a piece of cake. Obviously, it was a functioning fireplace, the needles were flammable...seemed like a no-brainer. The key phrase here is "no-brain."

Everyone was still in their PJ's and bathrobes, it was a cold wintery December morning outside and I thought it would be exceptionally quick way to warm up the house. I placed the bag in the fireplace, lit the match and stepped back to observe my grand vision of a warm glow from the fireplace.

It was more like a bomb. Two things were very wrong. The paper bag full of highly combustible pitch-coated pine needles exploded like a bomb in a huge fireball. Oh, yes, AND the fireplace flue was closed. Tons of flames and smoke and nowhere to go, except out of the fireplace into the living room. I tried using a metal fireplace poker to open the flue, but only succeeded in burning all the hair off my arm. Smoke filled the house. Ear piercing fire alarms started blasting. Everybody came running into the living room with their hands over their ears and not being able to take it anymore, ran out of the house into the front yard to hang with the neighbors that had come outside to see what was going on.

I finally got the flue open, and after opening all the windows, got the smoke out of the house, the alarm finally shut off, assured the alarm company to not send the fire trucks, got the people back inside and got to listen the post-stupid lecture from everyone about why that was not a good idea. Life's lessons are instant and impressive. I got it.

I REMEMBER...dreams, sights, sounds, smells

....sights and sounds that conjure up people and places from the past. I was talking with my daughter Sarah (age 10) about memories and making this blog. She had this really cool observation. She said young people dream of things that will happen in the future and old people dream of things that happened in the past. I like it. That just about sums it up. We talked about memories and how the older you are the more memories you have and how certain sounds, songs and smells can trigger vivid remembrances of past people and experiences. Every time I hear Suzie Q by Creedence Clearwater Revival, I remember working at the Italian Cottage Restaurant in 1968. I was a junior in college, taking 21 units, trying to graduate on time after “not paying attention to my academics” for far too long and working nights. It was the hot song of the day and it played on the radio all the time.

There are smells that can transport me, like a time machine, back 55 years in an instant. When I was a kid, my mom used to take her makeup off using Noxzema skin crème and both my dad and my granddad used Old Spice after-shave lotion. I have a tub of Noxzema I use each morning to wash my face – wakes me up instantly and I go back to when I six years old and kissing my mom good night with her face covered in white crème. I use Old Spice after-shave on the weekends and I am spun back to when I was about seven years old, visiting my grandpa in Tishomingo, Oklahoma. He would let me shave with his double edge razor (with a cardboard blade), using a shaving mug with a big hairy brush to spread the lather on my face and then splash Old Spice on afterwards, as we got dressed for church on Sunday mornings. After church, we would often go on a picnic and fishing on Pennington Creek under the old swinging bridge (actually quite famous and probably the only thing that put Tishomingo on the map) after church while grandma worked on “supper’. It wasn’t dinner, it was supper. Lunch was dinner. That was probably a Midwest or Oklahoma thing. It certainly wasn’t used that way after we moved to California.

Song of the Day: Creedence Clearwater Revival - Suzie Q

I REMEMBER..the guy who couldn't pull up his sox

...an old guy in a wheelchair we met on the street the other day. Lise and Sarah and I were leaving her ballet studio and walking back to our car. Coming toward us was this man in a wheelchair. Disheveled, dressed poorly, and obviously handicapped, he was weaving back and forth trying to get the attention of everyone that was on the same side of the street as he. We thought he might be panhandling. Sarah stepped out of his way and walked behind Lise. He was obviously trying to say something to them. I stepped up to him and said "Can I help you?". A look of thankfulness came across his face, and he said "Yes, thank you. Can you please, please pull my socks up? I can't do it."

He wasn't crazy or a menace. He wasn't panhandling. His old raggedly socks had fallen down his swollen ankles, and all he wanted was for someone to help him pull them up. After I pulled up the socks, he said "Thank you" and rolled away. I am sure I was gone from his thoughts. I, however, couldn't let go of the moment. I had my emotions changed in an instant--from distancing aversion to abject sympathy.

I had the blues because I had no shoes until upon the street, I met a man who had no feet. ~Ancient Persian Saying

At 61+, I am definitely on the backside of my turn on earth, losing my hair, legally blind with 20/1250 corrected lenses in my tri-focals, have a heart condition I have to take meds for every day to keep it beating regularly, have glaucoma and take drops every day to keep from going totally blind, and on the mend from almost a year off including radiation and chemo treatments for tonsil cancer....and I am still 1000 percent better off than this guy. God forbid that I should even take a nanosecond to ever lament my situation after meeting a man that would trade with me in a heartbeat.

I have often commented on how fabulous my life has been, and in many ways it is even better now that I have re-focused on my extra turn as a cancer survivor. I am happy every day...just to be here. Every day is Another Day in Paradise. I know people that are in the prime of their life, excellent health, making far more money than I will ever see...and are obviously very unhappy. This one executive I know just returned from a two-week vacation in Hawaii. I popped my head into his office and asked how his vacation was and without even looking up, he scowled and said, "I don't want to talk about my vacation." He never looked up at me or asked how I was doing... just kept on working at his computer and nothing more was said. It was a bit awkward, so I just turned and left. I thought to myself how fortunate I was and how obviously miserable he was.

I am even more thankful for my life today. I can pull up my own socks.

I REMEMBER - The backyard ribbon cutting

...getting the house on Calla Lily Way and although the front yard was landscaped and with a sprinkler system, the backyard was elegantly styled with a small concrete pad and hard packed clay dirt (kind of like concrete, but dustier). After vowing a no-lawn existence, we have toiled in the soil for years and are finally coming to a finalized resolution to the original plan created on the back of an old envelope. Fountain, trees, garden, patio, pergola, playhouse, shaded deck, shaded bench etc. later, we are having a professional put in a sprinkler system (mine spring a leak somewhere and lost all the pressure) tomorrow and are getting bids on finishing the patio extension and a sidewalk through the gardens (no more weeding the path). We had tea on the back deck today under the shade of our 25' tall faux pear. Nice. Lise has no vacation time built up in her new job, so the finishing of the back yard is our vacation. I remember that when we finished building the back redwood deck, we even had a ribbon cutting celebration ceremony...ha.

I REMEMBER..."Big Red" - My Volkswagon Bus

...my Volkswagon Bus - "Big Red." I loved that van. It was an all-purpose vehicle. I hauled plywood, tools, people, furniture, and went camping in it. It was my first NEW vehicle, and I drove it to Mazatlan, Mexico, the first week I owned it. I had the first 1,000 mile check-up at a Volkswagon factory in Mexico. Stayed in a little hut on the beach south of Mazatlan for quite awhile. Fished every day; had a great time.

Back in Chico, California (99 miles north of Sacramento - I graduated CSUC in 1969), I had various jobs from running the Italian Cottage Restaurant, working at Kramore Inn, etc. Most of the time I had my own business as a carpenter and a leather worker. Leather worker stories (Lone Eagle Leather) later. While I was a carpenter, I worked on a great three-story Victorian (built for a college student by her parents - nice), helped build the Redwood Forest retail store in a downtown mall, remodeled Ron's S.F. Flowers flower shop, Sundance Records record store, Bird in Hand Gallery, a couple of homes, a big 6,000 square foot mansion and caretakers quarters/barn in Woodside, CA (lovingly referred to as the home to Horses & Porches) and worked on my 40-foot houseboat in Walnut Grove, California (yet another story). I hauled my table saws and tools and lumber in Big Red. Never had a problem.

Side bar: I once bought a quarter ton of walnut slab scraps from a gun stock manufacturer in Chico. I hauled that pile of walnut from house to house, storage to storage for years, thinking I would someday make valuable things out of it (clocks, I think, was the original idea). All of that was accomplished with Big Red. After close to five years of hauling that wood around, I eventually used it as firewood in my fireplace...ha.

Went camping often to the north coast of California in the Ft. Bragg area many times and slept in Big Red when it was foggy and cold. Caught many a good fish--but never a cold. Picture of successful fishing trip attached.

Before I was a carpenter, I had many fun and successful years as a leather worker in Chico. I used Big Red to go to San Francisco and Berkeley for leather supplies and Haight Ashbury trips (used as a very loose term here). More stories to come later about those days, if I can remember them. (My sister, Sharon, says that if you can remember the 60's, you weren't really there.) Anyway, I bought a radial arm saw to manufacture belt racks from redwood to help convince retail store owners to carry my line of leather belts and so got hooked on carpentry. Leather evolved into wood. Big Red was perfect for both ventures.

All things have a beginning and an end. Good times and bad. The one thing you can always count on is that whether times are good or bad, they will eventually end. The beginning of Big Red's life I took him to Mexico for quite an adventure and throughout the leather and woodworking years, I never had a problem.

I was commuting between Chico and Walnut Grove (on Snodgrass Slough in the Sacramento River Delta) on a regular basis. I co-owned a house in Chico with friend Bob Crowe. I learned the hard way about the downside of living in and remodeling a house simultaneously. We had every room torn up and half finished for a very long time. Sheetrock dust and sawdust was in everything. By the time we eventually finished it, we had turned it into a rental and eventually sold it to break even on the investment.

On weekends, I would travel to Walnut Grove to work on the houseboat (was thinking I would become a houseboat builder and write a book about it--and travel to Amsterdam to check out the world famous houseboat community there...never did...but it was a temporarily good dream). I traveled back to Chico one fateful weekend and (thank God) unloaded all my tools at the house and set off through the middle of downtown Chico, headed to the lumberyard. The cool thing about Volkswagen buses is that they had a notoriously good Porsche engine block and except for an occasional minor flaw, ran forever and a day with no problems. The minor flaw was that the fuel line would occasionally become detached while in motion and spew fuel all over the hot engine block, causing a weird little "POOF" explosion, just loud enough to get your attention...followed by a lot of fire and an exceedingly large amount of smoke in, say, two seconds. Fortunately for me, I was traveling down Main Street, Chico, at about ten miles an hour, when it was Big Red's final moment. I slammed on the brakes, jumped out, and ran from store to store on Main Street, looking for a fire extinguisher. By the time I found one, poor old Red was engulfed totally in flames. Even the tires were on fire. Someone had called the fire department, and when the firetruck eventually pulled up, it was too late for Red. As they arrived, a rather memorable last hurray for Red happened. There was an electrical short and Big Red started up and started lurching down the street, full of smoke and flames everywhere. The firemen thought someone was still inside, trying to drive away. They were dragging the hose and running alongside, spraying it with foam and water. One fireman ran up and whacked the driver side window with an axe to see if someone was driving. As the fresh air hit the now broken window area, a small firestorm replaced the smoke and finished off old Red right there on the spot. Melted to the ground in the middle of Main Street. Note: I did not need the pictures someone took to convince the insurance company that it was to be declared a total loss. Rest in Peace, Big Red.