R.I.P. JC

Scattering JC's Ashes

Maybe coming down here alone wasn't such a good idea after all, I thought, as I fought my way through the thorny Blackberry briars. Salmon berry bushes tore at my shirt and stinging nettles raised welts on my arms.

Where in the hell is that trail? I was brush busting through what used to be a meadow with a nice winding trail a hundred feet or so along side Drift Creek. It had become completely overgrown with thorny brush and I finally gave up and pushed and clawed my way back through to the stream.

I'd carried JC's ashes down the steep, well maintained trail in my old backpack and my legs were already turning to rubber when I reached the campsite next to the stream. The plastic bag containing his “Cremains” couldn't have weighed much more than seven or eight pounds but it felt like a lot more. He ain't heavy, he's my brother! kept running through my head.

When I finally waded up to the big old Cedar tree with the brass plaque dedicated to our son and grandson Rick and Christopher, I dumped my backpack and took a long drink of cold water. The plaque that Brad's son, David had fastened to the Cedar was still in good shape and festooned with the usual array of fishing lures.

I carried JC's ashes upstream past the large redd where he and I used to watch giant Chinook Salmon turning on their sides to beat the silt out of the gravel bed with their bodies, and then laying thousands of bright pink eggs. When they hatched, the smolt would begin a journey down to the ocean and in three or four years they would return as adults ready to start the next generation.

I spread JC's ashes in a riffle and watched as a white, ghost like cloud of ash drifted through the clear water of the spawning area and finally down to our favorite fishing hole.

Foolishly I tried to find the trail through the meadow again, and once again had to fight my way back to the stream and wade down to the campsite, which evidently is the end of the maintained trail now.

It was slow going hiking back up to the trail head, but I eventually made it, and when I got to the car I called home to let Carol know I was OK, then I opened a can of beer and made a toast;

Rest in Peace, JC!

Doctor O

A Trip to the Vet

Every couple of months we make the trip upriver about 16 miles, to see Dr. Occhipinti, or Doctor “O” for those who can't properly pronounce his name, (which is almost everyone.)

Taz and Squeak seem to know ahead of time what's coming, and all of a sudden they get hard to find. Taz usually tucks in under the computer desk and Squeak slides down behind a cushion on the couch.

It's a lot like when Carol starts drawing water in the bathtub or even thinks the word “Bath,” Taz can magically transform his 19 pounds into 91 pounds and it's all I can do to pick him up. Squeak just starts quivering like she's on a vibrator. Once Carol's through bathing them it's straight for the back door and out into the backyard to find something stinky to roll around in, their favorite odor being, “Eau De Bird Poop.”

Doctor O neutered Taz and Squeak when they were puppies and they've never forgiven him. Now he just checks them out, trims their nails and gives them whatever shots they need, but you'd think they were getting major surgery done. As soon as we start slowing down at Dr. O's driveway they start objecting and the only way to get them through the doorway into the office is to carry them. I tried dragging Taz inside by his leash once and he left claw marks all the way and then pooped in front of the door just to make his point.

Dr. O's wife Linda and their daughter have a WWE professional wrestling hold they put on Taz, it's kind of a cross between a full nelson and a sleeper hold that keeps him still while Dr. O trims his nails and does whatever he does to Taz's butt. I notice Taz's eyes get big for a few seconds while he's doing it, though. Squeak just makes a lot of noise and vibrates.

It usually only takes a few minutes per dog and before you know it we're on our way home, sighs of relief coming from the back seat, until next time.

Plumbing

I've found that being “retired” doesn't mean that I'm retired from fixing things around the house.

The other day I noticed a dripping sound coming from the bathroom faucet, so I told myself, Self, one of these days, you've got to fix that! I knew it wasn't going to be easy, but then nothing is these days.

After putting it off as long as I could, I gathered some tools and tried to shut off the water to the sink. I laid down on the floor, reached up, turned the handle on the cold water shutoff valve and was rewarded with a spray of water, most of which went down the sleeve of my shirt into my armpit. I frantically opened the valve back up and the spray stopped. I realized that the packing had dried out over the years and the packing nut had to be tightened, so I slowly creaked up to my feet, ( laying down is pretty easy, it's getting up that's hard!) and went out to the shop for an adjustable wrench.

I finally got the packing nuts tightened on both valves and shut them off. I intended to replace the washers or O rings, or whatever it took to stop the faucet from dripping. I removed the handle and tried to loosen the screw underneath. It was badly corroded and wouldn't turn. The whole faucet was in pretty bad shape, so instead of taking the chance of breaking something important, and spraying water all over the bathroom, I decided to get a whole new faucet set.

I went to see the friendly hardware man at Ace hardware and found that their faucets were pretty 'pricey' or 'spendy' as some of the locals say, so I ordered one from Amazon dot com on the Internet, (You can get almost anything from them!) We would just have to put up with the drip for a while longer.

Unfortunately for me, the new faucet arrived in just a few days and I no longer had any excuse for delaying what I knew from experience was going to be a bitch.

You see, I had done the same job twice before; It seems like every ten years or so I'm destined to crawl under the bathroom or kitchen sink and pretend, painfully, to be a plumber. I didn't like doing it twenty years ago, and I still don't like doing it, especially now, with tremors and loss of dexterity lending me a hand.

I unhooked and unscrewed the fittings, pipes and lines, lifted the sink off of the pedestal and put it on the floor, where I removed the old faucet and drain. It looked like it was time for another trip to Ace hardware, where I bought a tube of silicone sealer to make the new drain assembly water tight. When I read the instructions on the tube, (the printing was so small that I had to use my reading glasses and a magnifying glass,) I found that it had a 3 hour drying time, so after installing the new faucet and drain, it was time for a break, or actually another trip to Ace for new supply line hoses because the old ones appeared to be too short.

The friendly hardware man recognized me and led me to the supply line department on aisle four, where a myriad of hoses hung, all of different lengths and sizes. He helped me search through them and it seemed as though they had every size made except the ones I wanted. I finally settled for a couple that were too long, but better too long than too short. As I was checking out, the cashier asked me, “How is your day going, sir?” In reply I held up the supply lines. A pitying look crossed her face and she said, “I feel your pain!” I doubt it, I thought.

By then I'd been up and down off of the bathroom floor enough times that my elbows, hips and knees were getting sore, but I was beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel and hopefully it wasn't a train! Everything started falling into place and with the help of my reading glasses, my computer glasses and my head lamp, I got the supply and drain lines hooked up and tightened. Holding my breath I opened the water valves and much to my amazement there wasn't one leak!

Maybe ten years from now, if I'm still around, I'll call a plumber.

For years my normal weight was around 155 to 160 pounds, depending mostly on my Pabst Blue Ribbon and Budweiser intake. My height was a tad over 5' 8 ”, but I could stretch another half an inch if there were any tall girls around.

Last year at the doctor's office the nurse weighed and measured me. I was shocked when she told me “135 pounds and 5 feet 6 inches!”

What in the hell happened, I wondered. I don't remember going through any radioactive clouds in my kayak or accidentally taking any of Carol's diet pills.

When I asked the doctor, he told me that some Parkinson's patients lose weight and some don't. Thanks a lot, Doc! He suggested drinking a bottle of “Ensure” between meals. I doubted that would help me get my height back but decided to give it a try anyway.

Mmm, Strawberry flavored Ensure! If you want to kill your appetite for the rest of the day, drink a bottle of that gunk. It sits in your stomach like a puddle of mud.

Since then I've been steadily shrinking. This morning I weighed in at a hefty 126! I haven't measured my height lately, I'm almost afraid to. The tension that I have to keep on my suspenders to hold my pants up has probably compressed my spine another inch or two.

If this keeps up I'm afraid one of our little dogs will confuse one of my skinny legs for a dog bone some night and I'll wake up missing a few more pounds.

There are countless web sites and TV ads on how to lose weight but not much on how to pack it on. I guess I could try steroids but I'd probably end up looking like Popeye.

Almost all of my clothing is too large, I'm real close to buying small instead of medium in mens size and if this keeps up I'll probably be in boys size before long.

Oh well, I guess I can always live in a doll house like the guy in the movie.........

The Wind Chime

Almost every afternoon for eight years I walked the mile to my brother's house and we would sit at the table on his deck, drinking wine and talking. Sometimes we'd talk about computers, sometimes we'd talk about books we'd read, or tell fishing stories, and sometimes we didn't talk much at all.

“There's a spider hanging from the bill of your cap,” he said one day.

“Yeah I see it,” I said crossing my eyes.

“Maybe that means you're not moving enough.”

“Well, I'm comfortable,”I said, as the spider lowered himself down to my leg and scurried off.

“Hey, where did you get that wind chime that hangs on your apple tree?”

“I made it,” I told him, “If you want, I'll make one for you.”

“Yeah, I liked the sounds it made when we were having our barby at your house the other day.”

The next morning I went out to the shop and sawed some aluminum conduit into various lengths, drilled holes to hang them with yellow cord and tapped on them with a hammer. A couple of them sounded sour so I sawed a little more off until they sounded sweeter. I hung them from a round scrap of wood I'd saved from another project, and in the center I hung a heavy nut and a big washer to bang against the pipes. Below that I tied an old Windows 95 CD to catch the wind. It wasn't pretty, but it sounded good.

I put the contraption in a grocery bag and carried it up to John's that afternoon.

“That was fast!” He said,” Let's hang it up and see how it sounds!”

We hung it from the awning over the center of the table and sat back, sipping our wine and waiting for the wind to blow.

“Sure is calm today, isn't it!”

“Yeah the wind usually picks up about this time, though!”

We sat, sipping and waiting for at least a slight breeze to move things and make some noise but there was no wind at all. We poked it and wiggled it and it sounded good, but it was supposed to be a wind chime.

Finally, a few days later the wind from an incoming storm got it working and it was so loud we had to move it to the end of the deck. It survived year after year through rain and wind, chiming away.

A few weeks after John died I went out on the deck. The table and chairs were stacked for the winter and the deck seemed abandoned and empty. The wind chime was hanging there, weathered, beat up and ugly, but still dinging, bonging and chiming the same old tune.

Taz

There's nothing more fun than a puppy!

Frog Song

1997 was the year of the frogs.

That summer our little backyard pond seemed to be a magnet for Bullfrogs. They'd come hopping in at night, establish their territory on a rock or a lily pad, the big ones sometimes eating the smaller ones, along with anything else they could get their mouth around.

They provided us with hours of entertainment and we even named some of them. “Bud” eventually became the biggest and he hibernated through two winters in the bottom of the pond. In the spring when I cleaned out the debris and leaves I'd find him dark skinned and lethargic, but after a little sun and a few bugs he was his old self for another summer.

After that first year, the frog population thinned out, I think Bud ate most of them.

I had taken hours of video with a hand held, shaky camcorder, and when I came across it yesterday I decided to edit it down to a little over four minutes of ribbiting video.

I call it “Frog Song.”

Grief

They say that everyone expresses grief in their own way, and that there are stages that most people go through.

    When my mom died of cancer I didn't cry. When my dad died in a car wreck I didn't cry. Oh, I teared up a little but I didn't really break down and bawl. I loved them both and I felt guilty that I couldn't show my grief like everyone else. It wasn't a macho thing, I wanted to let loose and wail but I just couldn't.

    When our youngest son Rick died I felt as though I'd had a part ripped from my body, but when I looked down everything was still there. The pain was unbearable but I still didn't cry. Then we lost Fred that same year, and despite more pain and grief I remained mostly dry eyed.

    The next summer I was at work doing my job as a maintenance man. I came to work at 3am when the restaurant was empty, cleaning and repairing broken equipment. I always set the radio to come on at 5am when NPR began broadcasting. I listened to the usual intro and then they played a melody that I remembered from my youth; Happy trails to you, until we meet again... Roy Rogers and Dale Evans used to sing that song at the end of their old radio show, and somehow I just knew that Roy Rogers had died.

    Sure enough, in a few minutes the announcer declared, “Last night the 'Singing Cowboy,' Roy Rogers died peacefully at his ranch in Wyoming.”

    I remembered going to the Saturday matinee movies with my little brother John to watch Roy and Trigger the wonder horse catch black hatted bad guys.

    The tears started running down my face and I had to sit down. I bawled for a half an hour. I knew I wasn't crying for Roy, I guess it was just some kind of delayed reaction. Grief had finally caught up with me.

    I was in the middle of writing this when our nephew Kelly called, and from his voice we knew that after a long battle with cancer, John had died.

    I wonder how long it will take to catch me this time.

My Ass Fell Off

Since my ass fell off quite a few years ago I've been in an ever increasing battle to keep my pants from falling down. My first solution was to just take up another notch in my belt, but eventually that proved to be painful - my belly didn't desert me, my butt did.

I found an elastic, stretchable belt that I could cinch up without too much discomfort and that helped, but I still was constantly hitching up my trousers, which it seemed were trying to demonstrate the law of gravity to me.

I pared down the items in my pockets, took unneeded keys off of my key ring, shelved my trusty pocket knife, cleaned out my wallet and put all of my change in a coin box. My pants still slowly worked their way down, especially if I was carrying something heavy, and didn't have a free hand to pull them up.

Carol suggested getting some suspenders, but I cringed at the thought of yet another consession to becoming an old fart. “You want me to look like Larry King?” I asked.

Finally after years of fighting a losing battle, I gave in and bought a pair of suspenders at Walmart.

“Hey, honey, give me a hand hooking these damn things up.” “I got the front OK but if you'll just clip on the back ones...”

Carol hooked the two rear clips up and I tightened the front straps. “Don't get them too tight!” she warned. I walked into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. “God, am I always this stooped over?” Besides being bent over like the hunchback of Notre Dame, there also was considerable tightness in my crotch area.

“Maybe you're right!,” I squeaked,” I think they might be too tight!.” Actually, if anything had given way, I think I would have been shot like an arrow from a compound bow right into the ceiling. Or the floor, I'm not sure which.

I've since learned to live with them, although a few problems arise now and then; like inadvertently standing on a shoulder strap while trying to pull my pants up, or trying to take my shirt off without shucking the suspenders first.

I loaded my pockets back up with a full key ring, my trusty pocket knife and a wallet full of useless junk. I'm still kind of stooped over, but that's probably just gravity.

God forbid, I am starting to look like Larry King!

Leaping Lizards

Several years ago (actually about fifteen or maybe eighteen!) our son Don called and asked me if I wanted to go Crawdadding on the following Saturday. “It's Beachcomber Days,” I said, “but I'd rather be catching Crawdads than watching a dumb parade with a few fire engines, log trucks and the 4-H club!”

“Yeah, it's a good day to stay out of town anyway,” he said, “The parades at noon so lets go before the madhouse starts.”

The following Saturday he pulled into our driveway about eleven. “Let's take our pickup,” I said, as we grabbed a couple Crawdad nets and a burlap sack. “The truck needs gas but we can get it upriver at Tidewater.”

We hopped in and headed up Highway 34 towards our destination; the junction of Lobster Creek and Five Rivers. “I hear there are tons of Crawdads there,” Don said, “we should really clean up!”

“Oh oh” I said as we pulled into Tidewater. “The gas station's closed!”

“That means we have to go back to town for gas. Crap!”

“They probably closed so they could go to Waldport for Beachcomber Days,” Don said, looking at his watch. “We'd better hurry or we'll get stopped by the parade.”

When we reached town we could see the ambulances, fire engines, and log trucks all lined up on a side street, waiting to start on their way through town, and we could see that the sidewalks were lined with spectators.

“Good! They haven't started yet, let's gas up and get out of here,” Don said.

There were a few cars ahead of us at the pump and we impatiently waited while they filled up. When we finally got to the pump I told the attendant, “We're in kind of a hurry, we want to get out of here before the parade starts.”

“I think you're too late!” he said. He was right, we could hear the fire trucks and ambulances demonstrating all the siren noises they could make with their WOOP WOOPs and WAH WAHs, a sure sign the world famous Beachcomber Days parade was underway. Our route out of town was blocked so we sat and watched the parade slowly crawl by.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, it ended and we worked our way through the jammed up traffic and got underway again. We made good time to Five Rivers Road and a few minutes later we parked on a wide spot near the junction of Lobster Creek and Five Rivers.

“I can see Crawdads from here!” Don yelled as he piled out of the truck and started unloading our gear. Sure enough, there were Crawdads everywhere, and we waded in after them. Don would lift a rock and I'd hold the net downstream to catch them as they tried to escape. Then we'd chase after the ones we missed, splashing and sliding on the mossy rocks. I was wearing a loose fitting pair of Levis which soon became soaked and waterlogged along with every thing else. I was having a lot of trouble keeping them up they got so heavy. I was stumbling, sliding and splashing along, holding my pants up with one hand, carrying a burlap bag half full of Crawdads and a net in the other when I told Don,”Let's take a break, I'm pooped!”

We waded back down toward the truck, climbed out into the hot sunshine and sat on on a big rock to warm up. “Wow!' I said,”This feels great!” I squatted down on the stream side of the rock, my pants still at half mast with a lot of “plumbers butt” showing. On the other side of the rock I heard Don yell, “Hey Dad, I caught a lizard!” I looked over my shoulder just in time to see it flying though the air as he tossed it to me.

Unfortunately, since I had my back turned, I didn't try to catch it, and it landed perfectly in the crack of my plumbers butt. Being used to hiding in cracks it scrambled deeper. Now, I'm not much of a dancer, but much to Don's amusement I went through my whole repertoire. Starting with the River Dance, followed with lively versions of the Bunny Hop and the Funky Chicken, then some steps I made up on the spot.

Don was laughing so hard he was crying when I finally pulled the little guy out of my pants, his claws digging in all the way. I frantically tossed him out into the river and the last I saw he was swimming for the far bank, no doubt to find another crack to hide in.

We caught a lot of Crawdads and had a lot of laughs. It was a good trip.