“YOU DON’T SEE THAT EVERYDAY”

Every day, if you’re paying attention,

you’ll see something you don’t see every day.

Me
 – demonstrating the depth of my wisdom –

to Mom.

Years ago, I hiked with a group of friends along the north rim of Chico’s (CA) Upper Bidwell Park.  Among that group was a biology professor, Rayburn we called him, from the local state college.  About 10:00 AM this middle-of-March morning, someone spied a small dot, high in the sky, a mile or two away, traveling west to east, over the creek that had formed the canyon.  As the thing got closer, it revealed itself as a large raptor.

            “Well lookee there, boys,” Rayburn said, pointing.  “That’s a golden eagle.” 

            He quickly explained about how the wing shape and the tail differed from a hawk.  As we watched, the bird abruptly dived straight toward the canyon bottom spreading its wings like a parachute as it neared the grassy veldt.  Touching down with a tiny hop, the thing churned its great, feathered limbs and rose.  A wriggling little something was snared in its clutches.

            “Wow by golly!” Rayburn exclaimed.  “You just don’t see that every day.”

            This, I figured, is why we hike, bicycle, paddle, sail or simply hang out outdoors.

The other day, out on some numbered county road in rural Yolo County, I followed a farmer’s white Chevy pickup at a reasonable distance and at a reasonable speed.  The greening hills of the Coast Range captured a series of my westward glances.  The old barns and derelict farm equipment also interested me and there were plenty out this way.

           At a particular moment, at the end of one of those glances, a movement caught my eye.  A low-flying doglike creature was racing toward the roadway ahead of the truck.  He shot onto the pavement not seconds before the Chevy would cross its path.  Clearing the highway at breakneck speed, he continued about 100 yards into a freshly plowed field.  There, he stopped, as if coming to some mark visible only to him.  Craning his head he eyed both the truck and me on the BMW as we headed north on the paved route.

            I’ve never seen a road-kill coyote and I wouldn’t today.  But, then again, in my neck of the ‘burbs, I don’t see coyote that often.

The very next time out on a bike, while waiting at a stoplight on the fringe of suburban El Dorado County, a Norton Commando 850(?), black, restored to near showroom, pulled past in the adjacent lane.  The rider wore all the Norton logo apparel: jacket and helmet emblazoned with the classic script.  A neighbor kid, serving in the navy during Vietnam had purchased one of these babies, only yellow.  I remember distinctly his inability to kick the damned thing over using every ounce of his 148-pound frame.

            The light changed and I was expecting the Brit to roar away, but instead, I heard a mellow purr from the vintage conical pipes.  I followed on the Breva, hoping to catch up and engage in a little bike talk.  But up the road a short distance, our routes diverged.  He waited in a turn pocket to explore Salmon Falls Road and I was seeking Rescue (the town) up Green Valley.  I slipped by offering a wave to the rider and his rare and beautiful bird.

            I wish I had the skills to restore and maintain such a thing.

Living on the shoals of Sacramento’s urban sprawl, I don’t often see bald eagles, so spotting three of them on consecutive fence posts along a Sierra County route outside of Loyalton was a thrill.  The words I retrieved when I arrived home fell short of impressing folks.

            Likewise the deer in our valley stream courses tend to be scrawny little beasts teetering on spindly legs.  Thus, my breath halted when, upon rounding a corner outside of Pope Valley (Napa County), a massive buck with about two dozen points stood in the middle of the narrow lane checking his GPS.

The Austin Healy 3000 occupies a spot on the long list of things I covet but shall never possess.  Skills to maintain, again?  Growing up, a high school peer, the son of the county sheriff, raced about town in a souped up model with a Ford 289 that would have earned him no end of traffic citations had he not been the son of the county sheriff.

            On route 70, just south of Marysville, an early 60s example, pristine white, appeared in my mirrors, having just entered the highway at Olivehurst.  I slowed in order to take in the rarity.  (I used to engage in this clandestine spying upon spotting a pretty young maid.  But no more.)  The driver was older than I.  To fend off the 52-degree temps with its resultant wind-chill and yet still enjoy the top-down experience, he had a hoody tied tightly over a snap-brim cap and under his gray chin.  He sat on oxblood leather seats.  His right hand rested on the shifter.  A grin told me he was living a charmed life. 

            My jet black Guzzi, an ’07, is a bit of a rare machine and I keep it really clean.  I wondered if, in passing, the Austin pilot gave any thought to the rider of it. 

            Nah.  He was drivin’ his Healy.  What could be better?

My ninety-one year-old mother often expresses her displeasure with the fact that I drive motorcycles.  “Why do you do such a thing?” she asks using other, more direct and disdainful motherly terms and has since I was about aged 15.

            “Every day,” I say to her, “if you’re paying attention, you see something you don’t see every day.”

            This statement always only earns a dismissive sweep of her hand.

© 2013

Church of the Open Road Press

OF WHISKEY AND MY FRIENDS

When I’m worried and cannot sleep,

I count my blessings instead of sheep…

 Irving Berlin

Click on any picture to expand for detail.

I will readily admit that I have a rather comfortable relationship with John Barleycorn.  By sixty, one either coexists with moderation or one does not.  Sadly, those who don’t, may not see sixty: think decreasing radius turns. Still, I was a bit surprised when my affinity for moderate amounts of the hard stuff made itself known to the mother of the wife of my best friend and riding buddy.  [We’ll pause here for a moment allowing the reader to sketch the necessary branch of a rather extended family tree.] 

On the occasion of my 60^th, said friend treated me to a baseball game at AT&T Park followed by a night’s respite at his beloved mother-in-law’s house before returning home.  She prepared ribs.  Between the rib course and the lemon meringue pie course, a box was placed in front of me.  Attached to it was a note, which I will transcribe in its entirety:

This is a story for the “Story Man”

When a gentleman holding the rank of Captain of the Hillsborough Police Department was recovering from pneumonia in December 1982, Cathy Crosby, wife of the famous crooner Bing Crosby, brought her favorite cop a present.  It was a bottle of Bing’s favorite Bourbon.  Bing, she said, would always have a sip before he “crooned.”  But this was a special bottle, made before prohibition but not legally sold until after, according to the stickers on the bottle.  Bing just kept it in his booze collection and never opened it.  It was 53 years old and starting to evaporate when she gave it to the Captain.  Not being a bourbon drinker himself, the bottle rested, never to be opened.

Years after Bing died, everybody told the Captain he should have the bottle sealed to prevent it from evaporating completely.  That is how it got waxed and sealed.  When the officer died in 1992, he was toasted with his favorite alcoholic beverage, champagne.  For the next 20 years, Bing’s bottle of Bourbon got shoved further and further to the back of the liquor cabinet.  Occasionally the story of the old bottle in the torn box would be told and some smart youngster would say, “Hey Mom!  I bet you could get a bundle for that on E-bay!”  Bing – and the Captain – would roll over.

So here we are today, getting ready to celebrate a storyteller’s 60^th birthday.  Who better to carry on the famous “Bottle of Bourbon” story?

Love always,

“Mom” and Captain Ernie
 

The neck of the bottle peeked above the tattered edge of a box opened and closed many times as the story was told and retold.  The front of the box carried the hooch’s brand “Old Charter,” as well as the name of the distributor “Wright and Taylor.”

Along one side read the words “Fully matured in wood;” along the other: “For medicinal purposes only.”  This was a product of a thirteen-year Constitutional fiasco called Prohibition.  Clear wax covered a foil wrapping further sealing the mouth and a cork that had slightly imploded into the bottle. 

Carefully slipping the package from the package a curious amount of empty space topped the four/fifths full vessel, though the cork had never been pulled.  Original paper labels were still affixed to the bottle as well as the paper tape that banded the wax on its neck.  There were two dates.  One here, “made spring 1917,” one there, “bottled fall 1929.”  Originally, the contents had been aged 12 years.

I set the bottle in front of me and looked at “Mom.”  Crosby had handled this.  It was his brand.  It helped him croon.  Are you sure?  Her eighty-three-year old eyes expressed nothing but delight.  I found myself running through my limited catalog of Crosby songs and settled on lyrics from a tune which had debuted in the 1954 musical “White Christmas.”

The vintage bottle rests in the back of my liquor cabinet, behind the Knob Creek, the Basil Hayden, the Lagavulen and some 18-year-old Macallan.  In five years it will be a hundred.

Between now and then, my riding buddy and I will debate long and hard whether to, if, and if so, how to dispatch its contents.  I lean toward simply parking it in a dark corner of the cabinet and, when the time is right, passing it on to some next generation.

However, I have this comfortable relationship with John Barleycorn – one that, sometimes, nudges me toward less than the most appropriate end.

Resources:  Crosby sings “Counting Your Blessings”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qmMaPTuTEE

© 2012

Church of the Open Road Press

THE BROTHERHOOD OF RAINY DAY RIDERS

THERE’S A BROTHERHOOD of riders (closed circuit to “Fishy” and “Demenshea:” make that “sisterhood” or “personhood”) who ride in the rain – stronger than the bond between those of us who simply ride. Here’s proof: On a sunny day, the wave you afford any oncoming rider may be met with a wave in return. But, then again, it may not. On a rainy day, we’re all too eager to greet one another. Suddenly, we’re all in this together, battling the same elements.


MOM’S BEEN IN AND OUT of the hospital as of late for various ailments natural to one who is looking at ninety. Three weeks ago, the late night punches she received in her chest, followed by the hot pain radiating down her left arm would signal anyone that something cardiac was going on. Mom, of late in an independent living home, looked at the illuminated digital clock next to her bed and seeing it was well past 11:00, decided to wait until morning to pull the cord for help. A mid-morning call the next day precipitated two or three 100-mile trips up and back for me without complaint. She needed her son.

Yesterday she complained she was “hallucinogenating,” her word, not mine. Concern was that it might be a result of the medications from the earlier ordeal. Or, it could be a result of her sad and on-going macular degeneration. Those eliminated, a test was ordered to see if there may be some sort of lower GI infection.


I SCOOTED NORTH on the BMW, clothed for fifty-five to sixty degree temps. My timing was such that if I went straight to “the home,” I’d find myself crashing lunch. I’ll do anything to avoid “crashing lunch” at “the home”, so I waylaid myself at my favorite Chico area greasy spoon – the Kalico Kitchen – with an omelet, coffee and a chat with Chris, the waitress who talks much younger than I suspect she is.

Departing the Kitchen, I noted that a screw and nut holding the crash bar to the frame on my GSA had fallen off. Lunch was still probably underway at “the home,” so I ventured over to Ozzie’s BMW to see about finding a replacement. “A part fell off my bike,” I announced to the young man at the counter. “Uh-oh,” he said. “Yeah,” I continued. “I felt like I was on a British bike.” Laughs (undeserved, by the way) all around. Ozzie, the Dean of BMW shop owners in the entire country, I again suspect, entered. He helped his help find the part and waved off any payment for either the part or the installation.

I arrived at “the home” just as lunch was winding down – a statement that assumes anything ever winds up enough to ever have to wind down at “the home.” My good and reliable in-town brother was already on scene. He was ready to cart Mom off to the lab for the tests, and since Mom never has owned a motorcycle helmet or leathers, after a few phone calls to clarify the situation, confirm next steps and resolve one of those inevitable snafus, I was rocketing south toward home.  Brother told me he "had" this one.


BY THIS TIME, a rather warm and gentle rain began to fall. Acting on a tip I learned from the kind folks at Santa Rosa BMW, I slipped my REI Gore-Tex layer underneath my BMW Santiago three-quarter length (My Goodness! That is a wonderful jacket!) and headed south on State Routes 99, 149 and 70. A fellow on some bad looking American Iron, waiting in the suicide lane for a chance to turn left raised a hand as I passed. Two riders on KLRs waved a bit further on. I’m assuming the rider on the GSX-R north of Marysville was young, but he offered a low five. All in all, on my hundred mile return journey in the rain, I may have passed a dozen or more folks foolish as myself to be riding in the rain. None denied me a greeting. None.

I try to plan one or two rainy trips in the winter months just to practice for those conditions when I’m out on a road trip. I hadn’t done so yet this year – the weather’s been too nice (Damn!). Tomorrow, a continuation of today’s storm is forecast.

I won’t be here at the computer. I might be "scootin'" up north, checking on Mom.

Resources:

The Kalico Kitchen – http://kalicokitchenofchico.homestead.com/index.html

Ozzie’s BMW Center (Chico, CA) – http://ozziesbmwcenter.com/

Santa Rosa BMW – http://www.santarosabmw.com/

The Oakmont – http://www.holidaytouch.com/Our-Communities/the-oakmont.aspx

© 2012
Church of the Open Road Press

UNCLE WILBUR

AS KIDS, WE VISITED BUCKS LAKE and stayed in the Greg’s family’s chalet. Greg was a neighbor kid. I hadn’t been to the cabin in forty years. But on a motorcycle ride up into Plumas County, my brother insisted we drop in.

Uncle Wilbur was out front, cutting willows. His deep blue eyes belied any trace of now being in his mid-eighties. With fewer than a couple of hints, Wilbur remembered us.

“How’s your dad?”

“Gone,” as were many of Uncle Wilbur’s contemporaries.

“Oh, well, want a beer?” He walked us up the path to the house past the rock pool fed by ice water from the spring up the hill – the pool in which generations of family and visitors chilled beer and pop and watermelon. Wilbur scooped out two bottles and reached in for a third.

“Thanks, but not if we’re riding.”

“Mind if I do?” he asked, placing two Millers back in the pool and adding with a twinkle: “Champagne of bottle beers!”


INSIDE, GREG’S MOM AND SISTER were preparing to head home after another pleasant weekend at the lake. Inspection of the interior revealed minimal changes. Wood stove still serviceable for cooking. Shiplap pine interior siding stained, or merely aged, nearly golden. Oval woven rug on the floor.

I looked out an expansive window recalling running toward the lake and taking a knee-barking header on the path, as well as my unsuccessful attempt to learn to water ski. I remembered the outhouse that had preceded indoor plumbing and the particular use of the stack of old Reader’s Digests cached therein.

“Where’s the privy?”

“The Forest Service made us take ‘er down.” Uncle Wilber reported with a shake of the head. “We tossed it over there in the willows.”

A glance at a watch. Approaching noon. Miles yet to travel this day.


WILBUR VAUGHAN accompanied my brother and me back down the path toward where our motorcycles waited. Along he way, with the hand not toting the bottle of Miller, he picked up his long-handled loppers as if readying himself to reengage with the willows.

“Pace yourself,” Bill said as we walked down the path to the road, hoping Uncle wouldn’t over-do it trimming the thicket.

“Oh, I’m not going to have another beer until I finish this one.” He set the pruners next to a pile of brush and held up his nearly spent Miller High Life. Then, with blue eyes flashing like the young man he once and always was, he whispered: “Champagne!”

***

NOTE: Wilbur Vaughan, a California native and lifelong skier who was recognized as the father of Bucks Lake Wilderness, died Tuesday [May 17] of old age, his family said. He was 87.

Read more: www.sacbee.com/obituaries/#ixzz1N0fSn4RG

REGARDING OUR TENDENCY TO HURRY SO

A sprint to a finish line.


A finish line, that,
with every fevered step,
moves agonizingly further way.


Doggedly we run,
terrified of the moment –
the moment that always comes –
that moment when we actually break the tape
and cross over to the other side.


© 2006
Church of the Open Road Press

REFLECTION FROM OLD GREENWOOD COVE

THE END WAS EMINENT. The night before she died, the family matriarch was asked if she felt afraid or scared. We clutched her hand.

“No,” she replied in a whisper, squeezing back. “Just sad.”

“Sad?” we asked.

“Yes, sad.” There was a moment of hesitation, then: “Sad that it all happened so quickly.”

Quizzical looks.  “What happened so quickly, Mom?”

Now, no hesitation: “Life.”

NEARLY FIVE YEARS elapse. Truly only moments. From a bluff above the ocean, I listen to the tide break and watch it wash over a tiny beach strewn with drift.

The words of the mother resonate.

© 2011
Church of the Open Road Press

INSIDE THE ENVELOPE

Your heart knows the words so you sing along –

sometimes in silence.

WHEN I ENTERED THE ENVELOPE, I was first impressed with the darkness. The room wasn’t dark – just darkened. Mid-day, no lights were on; drapes partially drawn. The outside’s overcast filtered whatever ambient light to the point that I would have turned something on somewhere in the house.

Next, it was the music.

I’m not sure if what I believe is fact of folly. But I’ve been told that sitting next to a waterfall soothes. Angst is dissolved by ionization that occurs when water tumbles over rocks and into a pool releasing electrons from their magnetic orbit and freeing them to course about. These negatively charged electrons do something positive to the body. So, in the vicinity of the waterfall, we are both energized and relaxed.

I attribute this energy and relaxation, in part, to the very sound of falling water. The rush. Its gentle cacophony. Its music.


MOM IS PRESSING 90. Dad, her constant foil, died sixteen years ago. Macular degeneration has effectively stolen her sight. Reading is laborious; television, a chore. Cooking is a problem; cleaning, unsure. A 22-year-old nephew now lives with her doing exactly what 22-year-olds should do. Coming, going, eating, sleeping, coming, going. Living.

Loathe to admit it, essentially, Mom lives alone.


IT TOOK A FEW MOMENTS for my eyes to adjust. I’d driven nearly two hours to Mom’s in the muted daylight. But the inside of the house was dark. Well, darkened.

Inside, music played. Choral music. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir performed on her Bose Wave radio, singing religious and patriotic songs, and show tunes. And standards. They were in the room with her. It’s just that you couldn’t see them in the darkness.

She told me it was the greatest music ever and I located her in the rocker she’d bought for herself as a wedding present back in 1948.

I settled into dad’s old leather chair.


WHEN A CHOIR SINGS – even a good one – it is not the case that you can make out every word that is sung. Like falling water, each syllable is a tiny droplet whispering as it slips into the pool at the base of the falls. The collective effect is a rush. A gentle cacophony. Music.


MOM TURNED ON A TINY MAG-LITE flashlight that she kept at hand. She fumbled with the Bose remote, and then switched the light off. A few minutes later, she rose, went somewhere behind me, switched on another Mag-Lite, did something, switched it off and returned to the rocker. She alternated manipulating the remote and running little inside-the-house errands. Always returning empty-handed to the rocker where she settled for longer and longer moments.

We’d visit a little and then she’d say, “Listen to this one…” And she’d share a tiny bit of history recalled by the song.


IT WAS AS IF she’d been slipped into an envelope: one that was about to be sealed. All that was inside was her life. And the music.

© 2011
Church of the Open Road Press

YOU DON’T SAY “NO” TO MOM

FINALLY, THE MACULAR DEGENERATION had worked its evil on what used to be known as the good eye and mom was now, for all intents and purposes, blind.

“Are you still safe in the house?”

“I do fine. I sometimes have to use the flashlight to see what temperature I’m adjusting the oven to, but I keep it at hand, so I’ve figured that one out.” She paused for a moment of thought. “And since Peke died, I don’t have to worry about tripping over her. It’s been a year, you know.”

“I know.”


COPIES OF THE MEMOIRS, histories and little fictions I compose, I send to mom. Although she was a masterful touch typist in her day, when they brought computers on board, she’d have nothing to do with them. At 62, she quit. “Never used one, never needed one,” and she doesn’t own one at home.

Living 90 miles apart, I call on her once or twice a month. A couple of visits back, I heard the usual neighborhood gossip, the successes and failures of my nieces and nephews and was reminded that it had been more than a year since Peke died. After the news, mom picked up copies of my three latest posts and came to where I was sitting. “Can you read these for me? I can’t see to do it anymore.”

You don’t say “No” to mom.

She settled into her platform rocker – the one she purchased in 1946 and still holds the sales receipt for – as I began, stumbling over several poorly crafted words. When I finished, she asked a question or two, then said, “Read the next.”

You don’t say “No” to mom.

The second piece was a bit embarrassing. It was poorly written, didn’t have an arc and contained a couple of typographical errors.

Note to self: For God’s sake, read the stuff you write out loud, maybe in front of a mirror, before you waste electrons posting it.

The third piece wasn’t much better.

“I used to be able to see,” she said, “but now, well… I can tell where you are and that your legs are crossed, but if I didn’t know it was you, I couldn’t pick you out from your brother.” She sat with both arms atop the familiar arms of the old maple rocker. “I think I’m legally blind.” Then she added, “but I’ll get an additional tax deduction for that.”


RECENTLY, AT AN ELECTRONICS WAREHOUSE, which, for some reason, also sells refrigerators, candy bars and girlie magazines, I found an adjustable floor lamp with a circular fluorescent tube that ringed a powerful magnifying lens measuring about six inches across. I thought about it for a day or two and then returned to pick one up.

Setting it up over the right arm of mom’s rocker, I took her hand and directed it to the switch on the back of the light, having her turn it on and off a couple of times. Then as she sat in the rocker, I adjusted the lamp’s arm so that it could pivot out of the way for rising and sitting and pivot into position for reading.

“Try it out.”

Slowly she moved a copy of the local paper under the lens reading aloud the words that seemed to me sized large enough to be printed on one of those highway billboards between her house and mine.

Suddenly, she stopped reading and looked up at me. “It’s like Thanksgiving and Christmas all in one,” she said, showing rare emotion.

That day, I picked up her mail just before getting in the Nissan to head south. Another one of my stories had arrived.

Mom: Before the good eye gave it up.

LAST WEEK, cruising north on the motorcycle, I decided to drop in on mom for a moment. Surprised her. After formalities – the neighbors, the kids, Peke: It’s been nearly fourteen months, now, you know – she handed me the story that had arrived when I last departed and told me to sit down. “Read it.”

“Doesn’t the light work?”

“Read it,” she repeated.

You don’t say “no” to mom.

She settled into the chair and I read. Something about Butte Creek Canyon – a something in my history that I think she remembered.

When I finished, she thought for a long moment and said, “To answer your question, the light works fine.”

I looked at mom and then at the story and sat for a long time after that.

© 2010
Church of the Open Road Press