10/01/1962

The surf stirred him awake. The waves were close to where he lay splayed out on a beach with a pounding headache, dried sand encrusted on his clothes. The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was a sand crab perched half in, half out of a hole two feet from his head. The sight of the creature’s two eyes fixed atop skinny antennae staring across at him made his disorientation complete. He closed his eyes and hoped that keeping them closed for a moment would bring greater clarity once reopened. Then he felt the cold ocean water on his bare feet. The tide was coming in.

He managed to lift himself to a seated position, facing the water. It was cloudy, the waves bringing in the tide were calm, the water behind them was still and gray. Slowly he became aware of his surroundings and, for several alarming moments, could not understand his place in the world. He could not recall the events that had brought him to this place and, more troubling, could not remember his own name. The blank slate of his mind brought him quickly to his feet, a move that made the pounding of his head unbearable. He dropped back to his knees, grabbing his head in both hands, and emptied his belly into the receding water.

He remained on his knees after the retching stopped, afraid of sudden movements, unsure of himself. When he raised his head and looked down the beach in both directions everything felt deserted. It was cool out, maybe early morning, which would explain the lack of people. But. . .where were the houses? There were a couple several hundred yards away to the left and a few small bungalows at least a quarter mile up the beach to the right. 

Still, not a clue of where he was or who he was. He managed to slowly rise to his feet and take a few steps when he noticed a pair of flip flops in the sand. Were they his? He picked them up and studied them carefully, but there was no recognition. There was a wallet in his back pocket. He had felt the heaviness of it as he took his first steps. He removed it from the pocket along with a hand full of sand. It was soaking wet. There was money, drenched and matted together, and several credit cards. There was also a drivers license coated in clear plastic, which informed him that he was a six feet tall organ donor with brown hair and brown eyes who went by the name of Charles Patrick Reardon. He raised the license closer to his eyes to get a better look at the photograph. Suddenly he recognized himself and, along with that first flicker of enlightenment, came a brief memory of wind, rain and a blinding flash of lightening. He remembered the violence of the sound and the way the hair on his neck stood up straight in anticipation. He had fled the house and run out onto the beach for reasons that remained unclear. But now, as he searched the horizon, there was no house. How far had he walked? Couldn’t have been far. But it wasn’t just his house that had vanished. Where was the Nelson house and the Taylor place? He closed his eyes once more felt the throbbing in his head and began to rub his temples. When he opened his eyes again he noticed a solitary figure up the beach about a couple of  football fields from where the Taylor place should have been that looked like an old man with a walking stick carrying a plastic bucket, headed towards him. Charles Patrick Reardon began brushing the sand off then ran his hands through his hair, trying to make himself look less like a drunken bum and more like a Hatteras Island beach house owner.

                                                                        ###

Jenny Reardon packed light for her post-Labor Day trip to the beach. She had thrown everything she would need for her long weekend in one bag, slung it in the back seat and hit the road. Charlie was away on business. It would be just her, a coveted four days without distractions, and after the front that was expected to move through Buxton overnight, the weather was supposed to be perfect. If the traffic was decent, she hoped to make it in time to watch the sunset on the sound.

After a couple of hours the lines on the interstate began to blur and pangs of guilt began to rise in Jenny Reardon’s heart. She thought about Charlie, picturing his face, the earnestness, his infuriating goodness. Twenty-five years of marriage had produced resentfulness bordering on contempt, but Charlie still worshipped the ground she walked on. According to virtually every friend she knew, Charlie Reardon was the perfect husband. . .rich, attentive, caring and easy on the eyes. Jenny found it hard to disagree, and she hated him for it. And now, here she was driving eighty miles an hour to the beach house that Charlie’s father had built on Hatteras Island to meet her lover for a weekend of infidelity. The pangs of guilt were, in an odd way, comforting to Jenny, evidence that she wasn’t an irredeemable monster. She knew that Charlie didn’t deserve it. She knew that she was acting on nothing more than a hedonistic urge, a desire to gratify some carnal longing that Charlie no longer was able to quench. The fact that she had chosen to seduce her husband’s best friend for this latest dalliance made the guilt more powerful, but not powerful enough to stop her. 

She reasoned with herself thusly while careening down interstate 95. “This will be the last time. I will never leave Charlie. I would be a fool to risk getting caught. I just need to get this out of my system. I’ll tell Rick tonight that we have to break it off. He’ll understand. Neither of us want a divorce. It’s just sex. We’re just bored, starved for thrills. It’s just a mid-life crisis thing. Just this one last weekend and I’ll go back to being the grateful and loving wife that Charlie deserves...”

When she pulled into the driveway she noticed that Rick had parked his SUV by the trash cans at the end of the street, an unnecessary precaution since Charlie was in Detroit. She wondered how long he had been there. The pangs of guilt had instantly been replaced with pangs of another kind as she grabbed her bag off the back seat and hurried up the steps and into her lover’s waiting arms.

                                                                          ###

Charlie Reardon was in his Detroit hotel room after the first day of his four day business conference when he called his wife. She had seemed scattered and stressed the day he left, preoccupied with her schedule. She had told him that she might head down to Hatteras for the weekend, and he had encouraged her to do so. He called to make sure that she followed through.  They talked for fifteen minutes or so, the type of conversation that career married couples excel at...lots of breadth and very little depth. He loved the sound of her voice, and listening to it made him miss her. Then the idea had come to him. Why was he sitting through a dull conference when he could be spending a weekend with his wife at the beach? He would surprise her. He booked a flight home and soon found himself making the drive down 95 with a surprising lump in his throat.

He loved Jenny, but there was something missing. He could feel it, although identifying it had proven more difficult. She was pleasant enough, always kind with her words and attentive to his needs. They seldom argued, rarely had any major disagreements. But she seemed distant at times, strangely bored with her life, a life that Charlie had moved heaven and earth to arrange for her maximum comfort and pleasure. He had first noticed the distance when Miranda went off to school. Jenny had not taken that life phase particularly well at first, but eventually seemed to warm up to their empty nest. Still, the spark that had always been present between them had disappeared. Charlie intended to get it back. As he made the turn onto Route12 he could see the menacing clouds in the distance and the lightening ripping through the sky to the east. 

He passed Rodanthe and Salvo, the little villages that dotted the thin barrier island of his childhood. By the time he entered Avon, the clouds were a freakish black and the temperature had dropped twenty degrees. The lightening bolts flashed out tentacles that resembled spider webs, and the resulting thunder seemed to shake the road. Charlie suddenly became thankful that he had acted on a spontaneous impulse for once in his life. He was sure that Jenny would be anxious in that huge house by herself in such a storm. But as he reached the outskirts of Buxton a great uneasiness entered his body, a crawling chill starting in his chest and racing out into his extremities. He felt perspiration forming on his forehead. As he pulled into the driveway he noticed Jenny’s Acura in its spot. When he killed the engine, the rain began to fall. Just as he was preparing to throw the car door open and make a break for the house, Charlie was startled by an inexplicable memory of the only person who he had ever hated. . .his father.

Patrick Reardon’s image was in the reflection of the windshield when the lightening flashed, his omnipresent grin and shining dark eyes freezing Charlie in place. It was exactly the way he had remembered it from that afternoon fifty-one years ago when he had walked into his parents’ bedroom and discovered his father having sex with Billy Cunningham’s mother. Billy had been Charlie’s best friend, and Billy’s mother was the team mom of their Little League team. Charlie had always been fond of her. She was pretty, had a happy voice, and he had always liked the way she smelled. . .like rose petals. But now she was naked and writhing around on his parents’ bed with his father, smelling not at all like rose petals. When they finally noticed him standing at the door Mrs. Cunningham had let out a high-pitched scream, but Charlie’s father had just smiled at him and narrowed his dark eyes. “Run along Charlie. Daddy is having some grown up time.” He was gone from their lives in less than a month, this having been just the latest in a series of “grown up times”, Charlie’s mother had eventually offered by way of explanation. The reappearance of this horrible memory as he sat in the driveway of his beach house about to surprise his wife made the uneasiness and chill of the moment feel even more sinister. 

Charlie looked through the windshield at the house and noticed there were very few lights on, unusual for Jenny who always switched on every light in the house the minute the sun went down. Charlie glanced at his watch. Maybe she had gone to bed, but it was only 8:45. He opened the door and ran up the long flight of steps at the front of the house which led to the most prominent and admired feature of the place. . .their wide and well-appointed 360 degree wrap-around porch. He had watched many a storm just like this one from the shelter of this porch when he was a kid, he thought as he reached the front door. Something stopped him. No, don’t walk through the front door. Walk around to the back and enter through the kitchen. That’s probably where she was anyway.

Reardon’s Walk was a sprawling house, built in the late 60s by Charlie’s father and finished just before the divorce. The rooms were huge with tall ceilings and windows that were so big it took almost an entire sheet of plywood to cover them when a hurricane came through. Jenny loved the natural light that the windows allowed in the house and refused any attempt to cover them with even the sheerest of curtains. Now Charlie Pearson stood at a window that could have used a curtain, frozen in disbelief. There was the love of his life having sex with Jack Kelly, coach of Miranda’s softball teams, his regular golf partner, and the only guy on earth who Charlie would call in a crisis at two o’clock in the morning. 

Both of them were oblivious to his presence, making this the second time in Charlie’s 56 years that he had interrupted a grave betrayal. This time he fought the urge to crash through the glass, grab a piece and slit Rick’s throat. Instead, he found himself walking slowly down the back deck steps and down the path to the beach, the way lit by the increasingly violent lightening. The rain picked up again, the wind lashing it sideways. When he reached the beach he followed the lightening to the water’s edge, his anger building, a fury rising in his chest. Then he found himself running down the beach screaming at the top of his lungs, no one hearing him, no one feeling his pain. Then a bolt of lightening...and now an old man asking him his name. The walking stick he carried was a broom handle with a nail coming out the end, used to pick up trash off the beach. His bucket was half full of beer cans and empty chip bags. He wore an old wool baseball cap pulled down low over his eyes. “You ok, Mister? You look a bit rough. You didn’t spend the night out here did ya?

Charlie ignored the question, asking one of his own. “Are you a renter or do you live around here?”

The old man lifted the brim of his hat and grinned, “Am I a renter? Naw, I live in Buxton. I come down here to the beach every morning and clean up the mess that those crazy kids leave all over the place. They act like the beach is a trash dump. They come down here with their surfboards and them transistor radios and leave their beers cans and cigarette boxes strewn from here clear up to Rodanthe. If their folks knew how they were carrying on, there would be hell to pay.”

Charlie had to interrupt the old man’s speech. What was it he had said about transistor radios? “Listen, I had a rough night and I’m a little confused. If this is Buxton, where is Howard Nelson’s place? Shouldn’t it be right about there?”

The old man answered with another smile. “I guess you did have a rough night. I’ve lived on this island for the last thirty years and I’ve never heard of Howard Nelson. You sure you’re ok?”

Charlie once again scanned the shoreline looking for something familiar and saying aloud to nobody, “Our place should be right up there...” pointing to an empty space in the high dunes.

“You say you have a place here, do ya?” The old man looked hard into Charlie’s eyes. “What’s your name, Mister? I know pretty much everybody on this island and everyone knows me.”

“I’m Charlie Reardon”

“Never heard of you though...”

Charlie glanced down at the old man’s bucket and noticed a wet newspaper. “May I?” he asked as he reached in to grab it. When he unfolded the paper he read the headline out loud...James Meredith Intergrates University of Mississippi. The date of the Virginian-Pilot was September 30th, 1962. . .one year before Charles Patrick Reardon’s birth. 

Three Awesome (terrible) Dad Jokes

Today is Friday, the 23rd of August, the very essence of the Dog Days of Summer. The humidity sits at 98%. It is not currently raining, but the weather people assure us that we are in for a deluge later today. Delightful.

So, what better time than now to share some organically grown, world class Dad Jokes?

Many of you ask me where I come up with so many Dad Jokes. Truth is, it takes lots of research and Googling. But, sometimes they just come to me. Other times, my kids send them to me, egging me on. I’m not sure why they do this. I would think that my propensity for Dad Jokes might be a source of embarrassment for them, and yet, just the other day my Son sent me this text...

Now...that’s a great Dad Joke, people.

Then, a couple of hours later, Facebook shared one of those “Memories” from several years ago which featured this exchange between my daughter and my wife...

Pam: What’s the best way to throw an eclipse party?.........You planet!!

Kaitlin: There’s entirely too much lunarcy in this family.

Two excellent DJ’s.

Finally, yesterday my wife bought a new computer from the Apple store. To her great surprise, they gave her a $345 pair of Beats headphones in the bargain. Since I was the one who had gifted her the money to buy the computer she graciously gave them to me. So, last night I thought I would share my news with Patrick to get his opinion on the quality or lack thereof of these particular headphones. I sent him the following two photographs...

  

Then, I sheepishly added a third...

...with the tagline, “They’re even endorsed by a real doctor”

You could practically feel the eye roll all the way from Nashville. Major Dad points with that one!!

Why Didn’t We Think of This??

Did you guys know that there is a Federal Program called Energy Star? It’s managed jointly by the Department of Energy and the Enviromental Protection Agency, and provides helpful information to consumers about energy efficiency practices that not only save us money, but also helps us protect the environment. Well. . .this morning I stumbled across this headline:

Federal energy program suggests keeping thermostat set at 78 degrees — 82 while you sleep

I cannot wait to share this particular bit of helpful information about energy efficient practices with my wife. When she hears how much money this will save us and how much it will help protect the environment, she’s going to be thrilled. Matter of fact, she’s probably going to pop herself on the forehead and say, “Why didn’t we think of that!!”

But this particular article didn’t stop there, it was packed with many other energy efficient suggestions like this jewel...

taking shorter showers and running fans while you do things like shower and cook can also help reduce the heat build-up in your home.

 This is the type of out of the box thinking that this country needs if we are ever going save the planet. Oh...and how about this pearl of wisdom...

Energy Star also recommends opening windows to fill the house with cool air at night and then shutting all windows and blinds in the morning to trap the cool air inside.

Now, admittedly, this suggestion might be more difficult to implement. . .since finding cool air, at night, during the summer, in Short Pump might be difficult. But whenever we stumble on some cool air, I simply can’t wait to trap it inside my house by quickly slamming all the open windows!! “There!! Now I gotcha!!!”

Another side benefit of keeping your thermostat set on 82 degrees while sleeping, in the south, will be the rapid decline in the birth rate. Because everyone knows that the fewer humans there are running around out there, the better off the planet will be. Also, and this just now occurred to me. . .yet another benefit of sleeping at a toasty 82 degrees will be that my wife won’t even notice when she’s having a hot flash!

Thanks, Energy Star.

Freshmen

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been noticing all the pictures of moms and dads dropping their kids off at college. There’s usually a shot of Dad carrying boxes or Mom sitting on a newly made bed with the freshman. Every room looks the same to me. Every room exactly like Kaitlin’s room at Cedarville and Patrick’s at Belmont all those years ago. . .cleaner than it will ever be again. The smiles on everyone’s faces look strained and fragile, as if the slightest breeze could drift by and transform them into pools of tears. For the kids, it’s mostly nerves at so momentous a chapter of their life story being newly written. For the parents, I see the Herculean effort being put into those smiles. They want so much to be optimistic and supportive. . .when what they really want to do is grieve the end of something. But, that will have to wait, at least for the car ride home.

For Pam and me the car ride home was nearly unbearable. Cedarville was seven hours away, Nashville nine hours away. That’s a lot of grieving. I remember that first year we dropped Patrick off at Belmont being the worst of all move-in days, since it meant the dawn of our empty nest years. That particular nine hour drive would take us back to an empty house. I had barely pulled out of the parking lot when I decided that we should pull over onto a side street and sit for a minute to gather ourselves. It didn’t work. Pam cried all the way to Knoxville. The first two weeks back home felt like a wake. The silence in the house was deafening. Our first sit down meal as empty-nesters featured Pam abruptly leaving the table after the blessing!

But eventually we discovered that an empty nest wasn’t all bad. The emptiness ushered in a new freedom. To our profound relief, we discovered the happy news that after 20 years of raising two kids, we were still in love with each other. Our affection for each other had managed to survive the grueling ordeal of parenting, no small feat. So, our children weren’t the only ones having new chapters written. 

Still, although your kids ultimately leave your home, they never leave your heart. The worry that has been your constant companion since the day they were born doesn’t go anywhere. You still fret about everything that happens to them. They get a new job and you worry if they will lose it. They get married and you worry if they will be happy. You wonder if either of them will ever move back to Virginia. You wonder when that first grandchild will come. You don’t even want to think about how much you will worry once he/she does!

All of this is good and proper. Change is what makes life interesting. Nothing is eternal except our love for them. Everything else a crapshoot. 

And that freshman, tentatively smiling for the camera? You won’t even recognize them on graduation day.

Beware The New Killer in the Kitchen

I recently read a scholarly article that made the case that we are currently living in the most peaceful time in the entire history of the world. That may be true, but that doesn’t mean that modern life isn’t without grave dangers. Sometimes, those dangers are an unintended consequence of what we euphemistically call...progress. For example, in our panicked rush to save the planet we have unleashed a new and deadly killer into our midst...

That’s right, metal straws. In our zeal to eliminate waste, to cleanse landfills of billions of one-use plastic straws, some wise guy came up with the idea of metal straws. My wife fell for them hook, line and sinker...

And while the concept is good, it’s always the unintended consequence, the potential for misuse that winds up biting you in the backside. Take this ghastly story, for example...

BOURNEMOUTH, England – A retired jockey died when she fell onto an eco-friendly metal drinking straw which impaled her eye, an inquest heard.

Elena Struthers-Gardner, 60, who was known as "Lena," suffered brain injuries in the accident at her home in Broadstone, England.

She was carrying a mason-jar style drinking glass with a screw-top lid in her kitchen when she collapsed. The 10-inch stainless steel straw entered her left eye socket and pierced her brain.

Her death has led to a coroner warning that metal drinking straws should never be used with a lid that fixes them in place, and “great care should be taken” while using them.

This poor woman was minding her own business, basking in the serenity of her well earned retirement from horse racing, when she suffered her tragic end at the hands of her metal straw, a possibility that the metal straw manufacturer surely knew was inevitable. Was there a product warning on the straw advising users to refrain from falling forward and being impaled through the eye? No. And even if there were, who would have the eyesight necessary to read such tiny print? Certainly not 60 year old retired jockeys.

Question: Have you ever heard a coroner warm anyone to take “great care” when using a plastic straw? I think not. In the old days, we didn’t need to walk around on pins and needles while sipping our sweet tea from Tervis Tumblers lest we get run through the eye with our straw! We all know not to run with scissors, but I suppose now it’s going to be...don’t run with scissors or walk with straws.

Is this really progress? 

Our Black Sheep

It’s what every family fears. The call in the middle of the night. The gut-wrenching panic that swells up and constricts the throat at the sound of the State Trooper’s voice. That feeling of impending doom when you see the squad car pull up in front of the house and the officers solemnly walking up the driveway. You have felt this day coming all of your life. It has been your nightmare, constantly in the back of your mind. You have always known that it would come to this. Every family has one, you tell yourself. It’s nobody’s fault, you remind everyone. You still love her despite the years of rebellion, acting out, and foolishness. But all along you’ve known that she would finally go too far and the long arm of the law would reach through the madness and administer justice. Yesterday, it finally happened. Our beloved Christina Garland finally went too far...and had the brazen gall to broadcast her sins on Facebook:

Christina: I accidentally ended up in the EZ-Pass-only lane on the Powhite Parkway tonight and could not get over to the cash lane in time! What am I supposed to do? Whom do I call? Are they going to fine me??

“Accidentally” indeed! This is a lifelong pattern of defiance. First it was innocent enough . . .refusing to come out from under the table at dinner time, failing to sharpen borrowed pencils before returning them to their rightful owners. . .and now this!!

Nobody thinks it will happen to them. Everybody thinks that it’s other families who have the problem child, that surely one so devoutly raised and nurtured would be able to resist a life of wanton crime and depravity. But, I am here to tell you that if it can happen to our Christina, it can happen to anyone. 

Thoughts and prayers would be greatly appreciated in this, our hour of need.

Hong Kong v. Chinese Communism

In case you haven’t noticed, Hong Kong is a hot mess. When the British handed the city back over to the Chinese Communists in 1997, it was only a matter of time before the free people of Hong Kong would collide with the authoritarian government on the mainland. The first protests came in 2003, then another wave in 2014. Now, with this extradition bill gambit by the Communists in Beijing, the citizens of this vibrant and democratic city have apparently found the straw sent to break their backs. As of this morning, thousands of protesters are still occupying the second busiest air port in the world, and the patience of the autocrats in power seems near its end.

When President Obama failed to wholeheartedly come out in rapturous support of the Arab Spring back in 2011, he was widely criticized for his inadequate response. I defended him at the time. Now, Trump is being criticized for his tepid support for the protesters, accused of being more concerned with getting a trade deal with the Chi-Coms than defending freedom and democracy. Now, I write in his defense. Actually, it’s his job to get a trade deal with the Chinese. It’s not his job to defend democracy around the world.

Sure, if I had to pick a side here, I’m all in on the protesters. In a perfect world we would throw everything, including the kitchen sink, at the Chinese government. Who wouldn’t prefer the triumph of free people over tyranny? But, we do not live in a perfect world. We live in a world of interconnected trade, and interconnected interests. Our desired response is limited by our inability to project power at will and without consequence. For those asking for more from Trump, a more forceful defense of freedom and democracy, let me paint you a picture.

If these protests continue much longer, and I find no evidence that they won’t, the thugs in Beijing will revert to what they know best. Does anyone remember Tiananmen Square? Yes, at some point very soon, the Chi-Coms will send in the heat. When they do, and there are tanks and armored personnel carriers rumbling through the streets, how are we exactly supposed to support democracy then? Send in the First Armored Division? Launch WWIII over Hong Kong democracy, defending one of the most opulent cities in the world? As much as I loathe the Chinese Communists...this is their problem. How many times in the past fifty years have we gotten into trouble by playing the roll of the World’s Policeman? 

What I support is minding our own business as a nation. The list of things I object to when it comes to the current occupant of the White House is a mile long, but insufficient support for Hong Kong democracy isn’t one of the them.

Boob Tube Guy

For those of you who don’t live around here, you are probably not aware of Boob Tube Guy...

For the second time in six months, a neighborhood in Short Pump has awoken to discover old school television sets deposited on their doorsteps. The mastermind behind the mischief wears a hollowed out TV set over his head, and sometimes poses for the cameras. I use the male pronoun here although Boob Tube Guy could very well be a woman. Whenever he or she strikes, all the local news rooms cover the story, each of them posing the intriguing question...why??

What is the point? Why would someone go to the trouble of traipsing around in the middle of the night delivering obsolete television sets to random upscale communities in Richmond’s West End? I have come up with some working theories for your consideration.

1. These are nothing more than college kids with too much time on their hands, doing what college kids have always done when bored.

The problem with this theory is..I believe that this latest incident occurred before most local universities had opened for business. Also, we’re talking nearly 30 television sets. Where did a bunch of kids get their hands on that many sets?

2. This is a television repair man who’s business is on the rocks, making a statement about excess. West Enders, with their constant need for more and bigger no longer have televisions repaired, they just buy new ones. Boob Tube Guy is protesting consumerism.

I don’t know...does this dude look like a malcontent? There is a certain whimsical quality to this prank, with his TV helmet and posing for the security cameras. He just doesn’t strike me as an idealist.

3. He is actually the ultimate Good Samaritan, handing out vintage tube televisions to households most likely to have big flat screens hanging in their living rooms. Boob Tube Guy knows that these new age smart screens are being used by the Dark State to spy on us, so he is striking a blow for privacy.

...but, he’s wearing a TV on his head. 

4. He’s just a fun-loving practical joker who gets a kick out of pulling everybody’s chain and getting himself on the nightly news.

I think we have a winner.

I, for one, love Boob Tube Guy. He’s a guy who has an active imagination, a sense of fun, and a commitment to quality. Have you noticed how he places each set in the exact middle of each porch? He doesn’t just slap it down all cockeyed and cattywompus. No, he takes care to place it dead center of the porch. This man has pride of ownership. If he’s going to commit Tomfoolery, he’s going to do it right. And another thing...he isn’t hurting anyone. Everyone gets a good chuckle out of it, the cops come out and load them up and take them away, and we are left talking about something besides politics.

All Hail Boob Tube Guy!!

Stupid Nature

Last night, the family gathered over at my sister’s house for lasagna. Linda had been ill during Beach Week, if you recall, and missed her night to fix dinner for all of us...so she decided to make amends by cooking the meal she had planned to cook at the beach. Yes, my sister is a saint.

The meal was fabulous and after dessert we all decided to sit out on the deck and chat. Soon, I was regaling everyone with dad jokes and the kids were romping around in the yard. The whole thing looked like an advertisement that might have appeared in the Saturday Evening Post in the 1950’s. Then...stupid nature happened.

It was a delightful evening, temperature in the low 70’s, low humidity, and thanks to the Mosquito Authority...blood-sucking pest-free. Then, Linda decided to take Evelyn down to the little kids playhouse thing that Bill installed years ago to entertain the grandkids. It features a little treehouse thing with a slide. For reasons that now escape me, I decided that what Linda and Evelyn needed at that moment was Uncle Doug acting as the slide troll. No, as a matter of fact, I do not know why I do such things...especially where Evelyn is concerned, since she has a decidedly mixed view of her uncle—part fascination, part fear, part—what tha?? Be that as it may, there I was kneeling down under the slide, preparing for my performance as...the troll...when I became aware of excruciating pain.

I had angered a freshly built nest of these hideous creatures, and one of them had come out to meet my troll challenge. He had affixed himself to the pinky of my left hand and was stabbing it with diabolical vigor. Try as I might to shake the beast off, he hung on, injecting me with poison. I finally managed to flick him away only to have him sting my right index finger before beating his hasty retreat. Now, the full effect of all of the stinging was brought home to bare on both of my hands. It’s probably been 50 years since I’ve been stung by a wasp. I had forgotten just how painful they are. Linda ran me into the house and before I knew what was happening, she had both fingers covered in a solution of water and baking soda and had instructed me to keep both hands elevated. So now my hands were slathered with white goo and my arms raised skyward like a crazed Pentecostal at a healing service! 

Luckily, I’m not allergic. Although both fingers started to swell, and the pain lasted several hours, this morning all is well.

Stupid nature!!

Jeffrey Epstein

For the life of me, I have not been able to summon a single molecule of sympathy for the death of my fellow human being, Jeffrey Epstein. The alleged billionaire, who seemed to be in the perceived influence business, rather than an actual business, and made his money by...er..uh...nobody really knows how or even how much money he made. What we do know is that Jeffrey Epstein was a horrible person who recruited underage girls for his own servicing, then provided them for the sexual gratification of a bushel basket full of very powerful men from both sides of the political aisle. In other words, he was the rich man’s pimp. The list of alleged Johns includes some familiar names...Former New Mexico Governor and frequent talking head Bill Richardson, smarty-pants lawyer Alan Dershowitz, Prince Andrew, former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, and of course former President Bill Clinton, a four time passenger on Epstein’s famous private jet, The Lolita Express. Even the current occupant of the White House appears on the passenger manifest from 1997...but in fairness, that was back when he was just your basic garden variety skirt-chasing adulterer, and before he found Jesus and the keys to the Oval Office.

So yeah...he’s dead now, by highly suspicious means. Whenever a man with that much damning information on so many powerful men turns up dead, it is perfectly natural to question the official suicide narrative. Within thirty minutes of the news breaking, the internet meme curators were having a field day...

Yes...this is hilarious. But any attempt to paint this as a partisan issue are doomed to failure. Once we make it through the 2000 pages of unsealed garbage that was dumped onto the public record over the weekend, the carnage from this thing will be a Who’s Who of powerful and well connected...men, and probably a few women. There will be plenty of Democrats, plenty of Republicans, and plenty of non-political members of America’s social elite. As if we needed reminding...this mess will once again serve to illustrate just how corrupting money and power remain.

The sad part about all of this? Because of Mr. Epstein’s death, almost all of these scumbags will get off scot-free. Whether he jumped or was pushed, not only did Jeffrey Epstein cheat the hangman for himself, but he cheated the hangman for all of his customers too.

How convenient.

A Raging Success

Yesterday’s little social media experiment was a raging success and confirmed something I have always known about this world. It can be summed up in just two words...sex sells.

Here are the numbers. In a mere 24 hours, you people have clicked on Sex at 60 more than you clicked on my last five posts...combined. The traffic at The Tempest has skyrocketed by 156%. And all I had to do is something I have never done in the previous 1,968 posts going back nine years...include the word sex in the title!! The next time you’re asking yourself why every advertisement you see on television seems to feature scantily clad women (and men)...just remember this experiment. The reason is simple...it works.

Does this mean that I am going to start writing more about sex? Not a snowball’s chance in Hades. Pam didn’t get around to looking at Facebook until five minutes before she had to leave for a dentist appointment. I don’t have to tell you what happened to her blood pressure when she stumbled across that title!! Luckily, I wasn’t around when it happened. But something tells me that a rare expletive may have escaped her lips. Bless her heart....the things she has to endure being married to me...

So, I suppose I should apologize to all of you for such an immature and childish prank. What am I saying? All I did is give you the opportunity to prove what a bunch of voyeurs you all are! I’m thinking that all of you should apologize to me for being so interested in my sex life!!

Sex at 60

This morning I thought I would share with you all how my sex life has been going since I turned 60. Some things have changed, but others have stayed the same, and...

Just Kidding!!!

But, it did make you click on this blog post...which might say a lot more about you than me! Actually, this is a topic that has fascinated me for the past nine years that I have been writing this blog...not my sex life...but rather, what exactly is it that people want to read about? I have written nearly 2,000 posts over these past nine years about every conceivable topic. But it has always baffled me why some posts, no matter how well written and heartfelt, draw scant interest, while others...even those poorly cobbled together...get clicked nearly to death. Looking back over the archives, here’s what I have discovered. When it comes to The Tempest, people are intrigued by certain topics and indifferent to others. Here’s what generally fires you up:

Politics.

Death.

Violence.

Dogs.

You may think you hate politics, and you probably do, but you sure love reading about it. Whenever I offer up some screed about Trump, and before him Obama, I can count on a much larger and invigorated readership. Some read for confirmation, others to get angry at my wrong headed opinions. We might hate politics, but we love...hating it!

If somebody dies or is in danger of dying and I write about it, you guys are all in.

Whenever I have anything to say about some horrible act of violence like a mass shooting, people want to know what I think. That’s not accurate really. What we all really want to know is what to feel and how to feel about these terrible events. Reading my take on it maybe helps people sort out their own ideas and emotions. Regardless, people are drawn to the topic.

If I relay a story about either my dog or anybody’s dog, people want to hear about it. This is easy to explain. Dogs never disappoint us.

Here are the topics that, more or less, you don’t care to read about:

Sports.

Theology.

Vacations.

No matter what the sport is...baseball, football, basketball, golf...not interested. Maybe this speaks to the average age and gender of this audience. Or maybe I’m just a crappy sports writer!

Nobody wants to read about theological debates, whether it be abortion, gay marriage, works v grace, etc. Again, it may just be that I don’t know how to write about those topics well, or maybe people would rather not think deep thoughts over their morning coffee!

People tire quickly reading of someone else’s frolicking great time on vacation. The reasons require no explanation.

So, there you have it, a little behind the curtain look at what you guys like and don’t like about this blog. Of course, the topics I choose to write about take none of this into consideration. I write about what interests me, not what I think interests you. No offense...but it’s my blog!

Can’t wait to see (and hear!) Pam’s reaction when she reads the title of this one!!!

Change

I slid the key into the lock, opened the door and heard the familiar beep of the security system. I punched my code into the pad and flipped on the lights. This routine, performed a thousand times seemed precarious after a month away...would I remember my code? If my buddies had any imagination they would have rigged up some trip wire or something to confuse me, or coated my office door knob with Vaseline. But I work with a group of hopeless adults, a buttoned up bunch of professionals who wouldn’t know a decent gag if it smacked them in the face.

The place had the familiar smell of leather, industrial carpet and copy paper. Somebody should distill it into a cologne. They could call it...White Collar. 

I stopped in the hallway and looked around at the place. Nothing had changed and everything had changed. I saw the fresh vacuum lines. The cleaning people come over the weekend. I saw the coffee mugs in the dish drain, the overflow of documents to be destroyed in a box on top of the full shredder. I stuck my head in the conference room and noticed that the candy jar was full of chocolates. The placemats on the glass top table—a redundancy that I have never understood—were laid out perfectly, the chairs snug against the edge of the table. My office was immaculate, a month’s worth of correspondence stacked neatly on the desk, already culled of junk mail. I had 38 missed calls, but they had already been prioritized for me by my rock star assistant. It was as if I had never left. 

After getting myself acclimated to my surroundings, with the beginnings of a plan for the day taking shape, I distributed the gifts I had purchased, placing them on the desks of their recipients. That’s when I noticed the empty office. I say empty, when it wasn’t really—the desk was still there—but everything else was gone. It startled me, even though I had been informed of his departure while in Maine. A friend and colleague of the past 35 years had decided to move his operation to an office he had built in his home. He, like me, is at the point where his work schedule isn’t as jammed packed as it was twenty years ago. His success has afforded him time to travel and the luxury of a slower pace. Why not save a little on overhead?

Still, I stood at the entrance to his office and felt a tugging of emotion in my heart, the sadness I always feel at the end of a thing. There is a part of me that wishes things didn’t have to change, although without change, life would be a colossal bore. Practically every work day for 35 years I have carried on a trash-talking discourse with my friend about his pathetic Redskins, his misplaced devotion to tar heel basketball. He has given me unending grief about the Red Sox, ribbed me about anything he could think of that might get a rise out of me. But, it hasn’t all been insults and trash talk. We’ve commiserated over family setbacks, health problems, the frustrations and aggravations of our business. 

How many people have I had a 35 year relationship with in this life? Not all that many. Fewer still who I have interacted with on a daily basis. And while it’s not like he has moved to Siberia—his house is right around the corner from mine practically—it will be different. Change. The constant reshuffling of the people and things of our lives, the shifting sands of events and relationships...change is the only constant.

Doesn’t mean I have to like it.

This Fallen World

So, its been almost five weeks since I’ve darkened the door of my office. My expectations for today are minimal and include:

- When I distribute the gifts I bought for the girls in the office, I hope I can remember where their offices are.

- I sincerely hope that I can remember how to work the copier

The one thing I always dread most of all is getting reacquainted with what is going on, not just in the world of finance, but in the world at large. People have a hard time believing me when I tell them that I completely unplug from the news when I’m on vacation...but it’s true. Its a feature of my time away, not a bug. It is purposeful. I figure that if some earth shattering event were to have taken place while I was away, I would eventually hear about it when I returned home anyway, so why stew over it while I am recharging my emotional batteries? In the past four weeks I have not read one single word about Donald Trump. No news of the Democrats in Congress has been able to break through the firewall of my news ban. I have learned about no fresh new debauchery from Hollywood, no soul crushing betrayal of trust from corporate America. The only snippet of news which is allowed access is Major League Baseball.

So, yesterday morning the first thing I read about is the mass killings in El Paso and Dayton. Sigh...

I’m back...and so, apparently, is the fallen world.

Home

There was no tear-filled moment standing on the dock. We didn’t say goodbye to the lake, although we both did stop in our tracks once to notice the group of eleven loons that appeared fifty yards from our dock. But it happened during our last hour at Loon Landing, and we were overcome with packing up, our emotions elsewhere. When we drove away I didn’t even look in the rear view mirror. Just like that it was over.

The drive home took 14 and a half hours. The traffic was manageable. Hardly a drop of rain. Come to think of it, the entire time we were in Maine I think it might have rained twice. The only accident backup we endured happened less than thirty minutes from home. I should have noticed the State Trooper whizzing by, lights flashing ten minutes before. When the GPS offered a quicker route with no mention of a wreck ahead, I thought she was just dispensing helpful information, but the 3.5 minutes the detour was going to save me seemed silly when I had been driving for over 14 hours. I ignored her, then sat in a parking lot for thirty minutes. By the time we passed the accident site, the ambulance had pulled away, leaving a fire crew, a couple of Troopers, and a charred, mangled motorcycle twisted around a guardrail. Welcome home, I thought. 

Home is every bit as much a concept as it is a place. Each year when we drive up into the driveway after being gone for a month, there is an overwhelming feeling of pride that wells up in me. This, despite the fact that the yard is a mess, the grass withered and brown, the hydrangeas drooped over and gangly, my tomatoe plants having been ravaged by the neighborhood squirrels. Dead pine needles have coated my front yard like snow, a rusty red needle snow that gives my yard a southwestern desert look. Exhausted as I am, despite aching hamstrings and a sore back, I instantly know what I will be doing for the next three hours before I’ve even rolled to a stop. This is our home...and it just can’t look like nobody lives here a second longer. 

After unpacking the car and removing the car top carrier and roof rack, I begin. I rake up the pine needles. I clean up the deck, reinvigorate the house plants that have been faithfully watered by the precious kids who live next door, and place them back in their respective places. I then cut the grass, trim the haggard edges, gather up a month’s worth of sticks from the yard and driveway. The sweat is pouring out of me, dripping off the end of my nose. It has been a while since I’ve been in Short Pump humidity. I haven’t missed it.

This was taped to the fence when we arrived home. The kids next door who I had hired to water the plants had made it to welcome us back home. These three pups are about the sweetest things you’ve ever seen. They all three had birthdays while we were gone. I bought them some cool stuff from The Smiling Cow. I have no grandkids of my own yet, so I’ve got to start spoiling somebody’s kids. I hope Stu and Jamie don’t mind.

So, that’s it. The Maine 2019 adventure is in the books. We will both miss Loon Landing. For the next couple of weeks, I will think about the lake when I drink my morning coffee. Pam will try to imagine gliding along on her paddle board at sunset. We will both long for the table on the deck every breakfast, lunch and dinner we eat for the next month. Lucy will miss the lake, mostly being in the lake. But, there are things we are glad to be back to. Air conditioning, high water pressure, a shower stall where you can turn around without hitting the handle and sliding it all the way over to the red H. Lucy is happy to have her back yard back. The first thing she did yesterday afternoon was walk out there and flip over on her back and roll around, making a snow angel in the pine needles.

Leaving Maine will always bring with it a sadness. We love it there. But coming back home will always bring with it a kind of joy. It’s ours, for one thing. But it’s also...Home.

Tour Guide

For the past couple of days Pam and I have had the privilege of introducing these guys to Maine...

Kirt and Jennifer Sederstrom are a couple of the many new friends we have met at Hope Church. They happened to be on a spontaneous vacation driving through New England. When my wife found out they were going to be in Camden, she couldn’t resist offering our guest house to them for a couple of nights. I can think of nothing that we enjoy more than sharing this incredible part of the country with others. They got here Sunday afternoon and are leaving this morning, but we served as tour guide for some sightseeing, and crammed lots of fun into these two short days. We took them to all of our favorite spots in and around Camden, then gave them a crash course in lake living—Maine style—which includes lots of flotation devices, charcuterie plates, and no judgement and guilt-free afternoon napping. They took to the place like old pros.

In other lake news...

Pam found the perfect lake bag.

Lucy has established herself as the MVV of this trip...Most Valuable Vacationer.

Had a fabulous dinner at Barrettstown Farmhouse.

Had another one of these...

The trees and the sunset reflecting off the windows of the cottage, with Lucy keeping a sharp eye on us...

So now the hard part of the trip has arrived, that uncomfortable feeling that rises in the stomach when it occurs to us that we only have three more days of this. Thursday doesn’t count either since we will be preoccupied with packing up. Our month away is drawing to a close. Reality awaits us back in Short Pump. At this point, I’m not sure who will more devastated...us or Lucy.

Never Let Them Take Your Pants

Reading Richard Russo. I love him and I hate him. I love the guy so much I read everything he writes. I hate the guy because in doing so I am reminded just how pathetic my writing is by comparison. I discovered him a few years ago when I found his Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Empire Falls, in a bookstore in Camden on the Maine Authors aisle. When I then learned that he used to live a block from the Camden Deli and actually spent time writing the book at his regular table there, I was enchanted. Seven novels later, here I am, diving once again into two of his more recent works...

Great writers have the gift of delivering truth directly into your brain without the distractions of car chases, bad acting, and the pretentious cinematography of film. You’re reading along on the edge of your seat when, out of nowhere, you are presented with a fog clearing sentence like this:

...People cling to folly as if it were their most prized possession, defending it, sometimes with violence, against the possibility of wisdom.

It stops you in your tracts. You find yourself staring out at the lake, deep in thought, sorting through all of the real life examples of this human tendency you have witnessed in your 61 years, how many times we deny evidence of our own errors rather than admit them, learn from them and move on. How many marriages have failed, how many businesses have gone belly up, how much of our own politics has been poisoned by this simple truth?

But then it dawns on me that this isn’t a unique insight by a great writer, I have heard something similar before, but I just can’t place it. Maybe it was from Shakespeare or one of the great works of Dickens, or Jane Austin. Then it hits me...it was actually from the Apostle Paul:

...They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped created things rather than the creator...Romans 1:25

...proving another 2500 year old truth bomb from King Solomon...There is nothing new under the sun.

Lest I give the impression that Russo’s writing is all deadly serious, I should mention that he is perhaps the funniest novelist of this or any age. More often than not, his humor comes on the heels of something deadly serious, which makes it even funnier. When he was describing a character’s deadly diagnosis of cancer and the blow it had been to his young son, he follows it up with the sick man’s opinion of hospitals...

...Never let the bastards take your pants, because bare-assed men don’t get to make decisions.

Truer words have never been spoken.

My Excellent Kayak Adventure

Yesterday afternoon I took the kayak out and headed north along the edge of the lake. I had my fishing rod with me, as I searched for a new fishing hole. The lake seemed ideally suited for such an adventure, not completely calm with just enough current to make it fun. I must here confess that fishing from a kayak is probably easier than I make it look. Fifteen minutes in, I sent a cast too close to the edge, launching one of my prize lures into a low hanging branch. Unfortunately, it could not be saved. The fishing part of my adventure came to an abrupt end since I had only brought a few extra lures with me, no swivels. At this point I decided to continue my trip and enjoy the scenery.

Quantabacook is a small lake by Maine standards. It takes up 665 acres of real estate. Loon Landing sits at the southern end and our view of the entire lake is limited by the shape. If a kayak were deployed on a voyage around the perimeter of Quantabacook, it would require an 8.4 mile cruise. My voyage was considerably less...

However, the 4.4 miles I did manage revealed some incredible beauty. Of course, everything looks better when framed by crystal clear blue skies. I believe that what makes Quantabacook special is it’s anonymity. This is the lake that nobody has ever heard of. It’s one of the few up here that cannot be seen from any State road. It sits back in the woods, isolated and ignored. I don’t know how many cottages, camps and homes are here, but when you kayak along the edges it doesn’t seem like many. There are long stretches when all you see are looming pines, spruce, and birch trees and rocks jutting from under the water line. There was one section where it seemed that I was completely alone on an abandoned lake, with only the sound of birds in the trees and a couple of loons for company...

I took this photograph from the marshes to the north, around two miles from Loon Landing. An otter lives there, I’m told...but I didn’t see him. 

I made the wise decision not to take on the top quadrant of the comma. Instead, I cut across open water to the western shore and immediately found something that had so far eluded me. Every time we come here, we see a magestic eagle soaring above us. He comes and goes in his impressive way, making sure we know that Quantabacook belongs to him. Up until yesterday I had never found his nest, but suddenly, there it was near the top of a giant pine tree...

The last leg of my journey found me getting uncomfortable. The giant catcher’s mitt shaped clouds had thinned, leaving me in the bright sunshine. At the one hour mark, my backside was feeling it—this kayak has a paper thin seat—and I was getting hot. Just about this time of maximum discomfort, Quantabacook threw me a bone...I turned a corner and found this lovely spot in the shade where the current had died down. I sat there for probably five minutes just looking and listening...

Looking back on these photographs it occurs to me that they really aren’t all that impressive. Unless you’ve been to a place like this yourself, seen it, smelled it, and heard it for yourself, it might not resonate. Quantabacook cannot be experienced in third person. It’s a here and now place.

Coming Attractions

A while back, I wrote a novel called Saving Jack. The idea for the story had come to me at this very place a year earlier as I was sitting on the dock fishing. So, I suppose you could say that Loon Landing was my muse, adding to the long list of it’s magical powers. Anyway, I like the novel, so much so that I am planning on publishing it as an e-book on Amazon. To that end, I have employed my daughter, Kaitlin, to edit the work. She has editing experience, has a Masters Degree in English literature, and an English teacher’s intolerance for bad grammar. I sent her the transcript as a Google doc so I can actually see the suggested edits she makes in real time and either accept or reject them. It has been a humbling experience.

When I was in high school and should have been learning all about grammar and sentence structure, I was otherwise engaged in more pressing matters such as the proper construction of paper airplanes, flirting with the many beautiful girls in my classes, and skipping school to go swimming. While it was all great fun, I have lived to regret my less than stellar performance at Patrick Henry High. When Kaitlin gets finished with a chapter it looks like a disaster, like there has been an ink pen accident involving the color green, slashes and dashes everywhere!! 

She makes very few plot related suggestions aside from an occasional - develop this character more. It’s almost exclusively grammar and balky phrasing. In her defense, I probably approve 95% of them. She is making the manuscript so much better, earning her money. When I attempted an apology of sorts for all of my errors, she attempted to reassure me with this classic—Dad, you’re a great writer, its just that you struggle with grammar and phrasing. That’s like a pitching coach telling his rookie pitcher—Kid, you’re a great pitcher except for the fact that you have no control, your curve ball has no bite and you need to work on your velocity!!

The plan is to scrub all of my grammar and phrasing embarrassments away and come up with a clean copy. Then, come up with some compelling cover art. After that, I will devote myself to the business of getting it self published for sale on Amazon. To make it work, I will have to market Saving Jack. I will start with promoting it here on The Tempest. The hope is that many of you will be willing to purchase it in ebook form for the currently undecided price of between $5.99 and $9.99. The second part of the plan is that those who do buy it will love it and immediately start telling their friends about it and spreading the thing around Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and more importantly...write glowing reviews of it on Amazon! Of course after the thing sells 100,000 copies, a bidding war will erupt between all the major New York publishers, I will end up on a book tour, get interviewed on the Today Show and make a million dollars, and about the time it gets made into a movie I’ll be ready to publish  A Life of Dreams. ( I think this is an excellent example of what Kaitlin is talking about when she says—confusing phrasing)!!

Anyway, I’ll keep you all posted on the development of this project. Set aside your $5–$10 bucks now.

A Quiet, Magestic Day

Today, it’s raining and 65. It’s a quiet day, a day for reading and clam chowder. A trip into town is in the works to pick up some odds and ends, perhaps another book, since I’m about finished Anthony Horowitz’ The Sentence Is Death. A game or two of Rummikub will be played. Naps will be taken. Maybe dinner out. Usually, Lucy gets unsettled by the rain. This morning not so much...

What follows are some pictures we have taken over the past couple of slower days, which gave us a chance to revisit some of our favorite spots:

A schooner on Penobscot Bay

Camden, from the top of Mount Battie

Lucy, unimpressed with the view

Perhaps the loveliest picnic spot in all of America

Pam swinging on her favorite swings at Camden Hills State Park

I am the only one in this photograph without a small mouth 

My faithful fishing buddy

Lucy protecting Mom from the dangerous approach of four Canadian Geese

Lucy inspecting her catch

Dinner

Yes...another sunset

And now as Pam paddles back from another sunset trip on the lake, the loons begin to call out. I have no picture of the sound. You’ll have to close your eyes and imagine it for yourself.