Knots

One day my father walked with me into the woods to show me a special tree. At first it appeared hardly different than its neighbors but then I noticed that its trunk had been twisted into a giant knot. I wondered, how anyone could tie a knot into a tree trunk. Puzzled, I asked my father.

"Like this," he said, stooping to tie a simple knot in a tiny sapling.

I carry knots of my own; some physical, some emotional. But none as big as that knot tied in the trunk of a tree. My biggest knots are no larger than a limp to remind me of past surgeries or a persistent fear that still affects the choices I make.

If I carried a REALLY big knot I would find comfort in the memory of that special tree my father showed me. Although profoundly and forever altered by events in its past, it still managed to do the things God created trees to do.

I wish I could remember where to find that tree today. I would take my grandson for a walk in the woods.

Eat to Live

I am a vegetarian. I eat only vegetables, mainly leafy greens, fruit and beans. I avoid meat, fish, dairy products and eggs. I have eaten this way for a year. My motivation is to improve my health, specifically to lower my weight, blood pressure and cholesterol. I don't believe that eating meat is a bad thing or that people who eat meat are bad people. People are free to eat just as they choose. I do.

In the last six months that I ate meat I ate almost nothing else. I followed a low-carbohydrate diet, eating mainly meat and cheese. My motive then was the same as now, to lower my weight, blood pressure and cholesterol. It seemed to work for awhile but then my weight loss stopped I became concerned about all the medical warnings against eating so much fat and protien. It just did not feel healthy.

A friend suggested that I read the book, "Eat to Live" by Dr. Joel Fuhrman. Dr. Fuhrman advocates eating mostly raw salads, steamed vegetables and beans, avoiding fats and all animal products. I began reading the book in a bookstore coffee shop, finished it that night at home, restocked my refridgerator the next day and began to eat as Fuhrman suggests.

The Christmas holiday was a dietary challenge. Food was everywhere, all the time. The office was filled with cookies and cakes and candies. Vendors sent gift baskets of fruit and cheeses and sausages and crackers. I had the most trouble with the cookies. I love cookies, especially chocolate chip.

I eat like I once drank; first the man takes a cookie, then the cookie takes a cookie, then the cookie takes the man.

Now that Christmas has passed I am slowly regaining my discipline. I avoid cookies but am finding it difficult to scale back on my daily calorie load. I like volume in my food, lots of biting and chewing and swallowing. That is not a problem so long as I limit myself to foods that are part of my plan; lettuce, green leafy vegetables, beans and fruit. I have gotten into the bad habit of eating breads and crackers; bad because both are high in calorie while low in nutrients. They are fun to eat but offer little more than calories and flavor.

John, my nutrition muse, suggests that I reread "Eat to Live." Unfortunately, I loaned it to a friend who is presently a hospital patient. My book is unavailable. I know what Fuhrman would have me to eat, but I miss the inspiration of his words.

I think I will move to the kitchen and cook up a pot of split pea soup.

Wow, now I'm salivating. I am OUTTA HERE!

Christmas 2004

It was a good Christmas.

Wife and kids drove to Tennessee on the 22nd to spend the holiday with parents/grandparents. I stayed home until Christmas Eve, then drove eight hours from Pennslvania to Tennessee. The weather was dry, roads were clear, traffic was light; a delightful drive.

Wife drove my Jeep (her old Suburban began protesting just before the trip.) I drove a rental (Hertz, full-size Buick, $20/day, unlimited miles, sweet deal.) I returned today, they will return after the New Year.

The visit was nice. I behaved myself; easier now that I have made significant changes in my life (spiritually speaking.) All are well.

On the way back I detoured into the southern Virginia mountains and visited Aunt Betty. It was the highlight of the holiday. Aunt Betty lives alone in a rustic cabin that some might call primitive. I call it wonderful. Few other cabins boast a gazebo elevated above the roof by a central supporting pole, or a private pond filed with fish. Her outhouse was replaced this year by an indoor composting toilet, much more convenient in winter. Running water is gravity-fed from a spring, The inside walls are planked in lumber salvaged from old barns. Her bookcase is filled with titles spanning a spectrum from novels to quantum mechanics.

Aunt Betty came to the mountains years ago, in a converted school bus with her children. The chidren grew and scattered. Aunt Betty stayed in this place that has become a comfortable refuge. She reads, visits, corresponds with friends and family, lives in the company of dogs and makes a life that suits her.

She is my connection to family; my father's sister, my baby-sitter from years ago when I was too small to remember. She tells me stories about my father as a boy, my mother as a young bride, my grandparents as real people rather than the icons they became in my memory.

We visit like people did a century ago. We share coffee and conversation, watch sunsets and moon risings, enjoy each other's company and silence.

I love my Aunt Betty. I would love to tell you more about her, and I will.

I hope that you all had a Merry Chrstmas and will enjoy a happy and healthy New Year.

Roads

Roads fascinate me. I don’t mean just highways built for automobiles. I am fascinated by the very concept of a public way by which people may travel from where they are to wherever they want to be. The road is the ultimate symbol of freedom in America. We each are free to strike out upon it to seek our fortunes, to hit it if we feel unwelcome, to mosey on down it when the mood strikes us. The road carries new people into our lives, entertains us with the view of a world passing by our door and offers a welcomed route of escape from imminent danger.

Certain public ways are special to me; most special is the Appalachian Trail. I was a young boy when I first learned that a continuous footpath ran 2,160 miles from Katahdin in Maine to Springer Mountain in Georgia. I immediately resolved to one day walk its entire length. While I have yet to complete the trek I do manage to hike at least some portion of the trail when my travels happen to intersect its course. Each visit to the Appalachian Trail seems magical and I often feel the urge to continue hiking, leaving the world and its problems behind for others to solve.

The Lincoln Highway was America’s first trans-continental road, conceived in 1913 specifically with automobiles in mind. It was designed to connect New York and San Francisco with a well-graded gravel roadway. Early motorists, forced to navigate muddy and unmarked, single-lane tracks once they strayed from local streets, could at last venture to travel from coast to coast with a reasonable expectation of completing their trip. In the years that followed, numbers rather than names designated federal highways. The original route of the Lincoln Highway today is comprised of portions of US 1, US 30, US 530, US 40 and US 50. US Route 30 passes within 20 miles of my home.

The DuPont Highway runs north and south through the state of Delaware and was the worlds first divided highway. T. Coleman duPont offered to build the road in 1908 and donate it to the citizens of the state. Conceived as a broad transportation corridor consisting of parallel one-way paved dual-lanes, gravel farm service roads and rail tracks, the road was completed as only a single-lane paved highway in 1924. The state did not want to assume the cost of maintaining such an ambitious project. Delaware soon led the nation in highway construction and in 1933 the DuPont Highway was finally widened into a dual highway. Today it is known as US Route 13. Much of my boyhood was spent in towns along or near its path.

Traveling the Pennsylvania Turnpike was a twice-annual ritual as I accompanied my grandparents to Minnesota to spend the summers at their lakeside home. It was like no other American road; cloverleaf interchanges, roadside picnic tables, modern service plazas with restaurants, gift shops and gas stations, exciting passages beneath mountains through long, lighted tunnels. The tollbooth attendants wore crisp uniforms and were always courteous. I imagined that working in the tollbooth must be the greatest job in the world; meeting so many nice people on their way to exciting places. Today’s typical interstate highway is more modern, but turning from a narrow road onto the Pennsylvania Turnpike in 1951 was like being rocketed into the future.

Hiking any trail through the wilderness fires my imagination. I am conscious that my footsteps follow in those of Native Americans who hunted and lived for generations on the surrounding land. I am reminded of the pioneers who struggled through dangerous and unknown terrain in search of safety and a meadow that they could claim as their own. I imagine the wild creatures that preceded man by millennium and blazed these pathways by instinct between sources of water and food. Wilderness trails are like time machines, transporting me to a world that existed before man had need even to invent the word “progress.” Alone on a trail I do not always feel comfortable but I always feel that I have returned to a place where I belong.

I am intrigued by the short stretches of abandoned road I sometimes spy paralleling my travel route. They are victims of obsolescence, snippets of once important and well-traveled roadways that lost their value when greater speeds dictated a need for wider lanes, shallower curves and higher banking. Sometimes these orphaned paths assume a new role as extended driveways to houses that once sat near the thoroughfare but now are set well back from the new route. Some lucky few homeowners gained possession of a private bridge, originally built to carry commerce and travelers between communities but now crossed only on ones way to school, work or the grocery.

What I like most about roads is that each one is an invitation to explore. I enjoy coming upon a road and being almost surprised as my hands turn the wheel unconsciously toward the new path just because I find something interesting in the way it curves down into the trees. Or, perhaps a sign suggests that changing course and going that way now will lead me to something of interest.

Any road that ends at a stop sign is a public way, a path I am free to follow if only I want to. I love to mosey on down the road on a Saturday morning with no destination in mind. Every intersection becomes an opportunity for adventure. The paths I choose seldom disappoint me. It seems to matter little whether I turn left or right. If I show any preference it is, like Robert Frost, to take the road less traveled.

Christmas Eve Dinner

Late one Christmas Eve I took a break from arranging gifts under the tree and drove to the convenience store for cigarettes. It was cold and late and I was anxious to finish assembling plastic toys and attaching decals. The kids would be up early to discover what Santa had brought them. My warm bed was calling to me.

As I returned to my car an old man in a worn coat approached me in the parking lot.

“Excuse me sir, could you spare a couple of dollars?” he asked. He surprised me; I thought the police had cleared the panhandlers from this part of town.

“No, I can’t” I replied and reached for the door handle.

“I’m hungry sir, I’m a veteran, please…” This one was bold. Usually these people took no for an answer and moved on quickly. I ignored him, got into my car and prepared to start the engine. He remained at my door, just staring. I rolled down the window, annoyed.

“Look, I don’t give money to strangers on the street. You move along.” That should have been the end of it. But he stood fast, staring at me through tired eyes from under the dirty brim of a ball cap. I wasn’t about to let this guy intimidate me. I returned his gaze defiantly.

“It’s Christmas…” he said softly, then slowly turned and walked away.

I was irritated and turned out of the parking lot to start for home. But his words were haunting; it’s Christmas. A sense of shame crept over me like a cold draft under my jacket. Driving home to my comfortable house I wondered where he was headed. Perhaps to find a fence as a windbreak against the cold while he made his bed on the ground. I remembered a story my mother once told me of passing a longhaired tramp on the street and wondering to herself if that was how God might choose to reveal himself to the world.

Just ahead the Western Sizzler Steak House was open for the holiday. My car seemed to turn into the parking lot on it’s own. I asked the waitress to do me a favor.

“Look” I said, “a man will come in here in a minute. I want you to give him whatever he wants. Make sure to include dessert. Anything left over is yours as a tip, OK?” I handed her a twenty and wrote my phone number, asking her to call me by midnight if he didn’t arrive.

I found him a block away, leaning into the wind with his collar pulled up around his face. He looked warily in my direction as I stopped the car and motioned him over.

“Look, I’m sorry about earlier. I want to give you something.”
He stood at the curb silently.
I continued, “The restaurant back there is holding a meal for you.”
“I didn’t ask you for a meal” he protested.
“Would you let me do this,” I asked, “please?” I extended my hand through the open window.

He hesitated, but then his eyes softened and he accepted my handshake. “Thank you” he said, “Merry Christmas to you and to your family.”
Merry Christmas to you, too,” I replied and drove away. In the rearview mirror I saw him watch me until I turned the corner toward home.

The phone rang just before midnight; it was the waitress.

“Didn’t he come in?” I asked.
“Oh, he’s here now, still eating. I just wanted you to know he arrived OK and is enjoying Christmas dinner. In fact, the cook and I made up a box of food to take with him tonight. We didn’t want him to be hungry again in the morning.”
“Did I leave you with enough money?”
“Don’t worry about the money,” she said, “you left plenty. I just wanted you to know that your friend is here, and to wish you a Merry Christmas.”

The next day my family gathered to open presents. I have forgotten what was under the tree for me that morning. But I will always remember the unexpected gift a lonely stranger gave to me on Christmas Eve. He gave me my first heartfelt experience of gratitude and humility.

In this holiday season I remain grateful for the abundance of blessings in my life, and humble in the knowledge that I have not earned them. All my blessings are but gifts of God’s grace.

Another Year

Today is my birthday. I am going to make a special effort to be easy on myself today.

I feel fine, despite the impression my previous post may have given.

I think sometimes that my real problem is self-pity, not depression. I am self-centered and selfish by nature and self-pity is a tactic I use to wallow in myself. It's a problem, I know, but I am working on it.

More later...

Blue Christmas

Last Sunday our pastor spoke about the depression that some people feel at Christmas. I am glad he brought it up. I feel not only depressed during the holidays but guilty as well; guilty about being depressed. It was comforting to know that I am not alone.

My wife will be taking the kids to Tennessee to visit with her parents again this year. I will stay home, as usual. I will miss them but somehow it is better that they gather together to celebrate and leave me here to tough out these few weeks on my own. I won't isolate. I will make the rounds of friends and spend time at the 12-Step club house.

I remember enjoying this season as a boy, but the experience has been an unpleasant one for all of my adult life. I don't know why. I am bothered by the atificial feel of the cheer I encounter in public. Stores play tired old tapes of Christmas music. Shoppers bump into each other at the mall and stand impatiently in lines waiting to hand their credit cards to the clerks. Lamp poles are draped in decorations that seem more generic every year.

See what I mean? With this attitude it is better that I not be with the family, tucked in the corner like an emotional black hole, sucking the good holiday spirit right out of the room.

I'm not writing this to invite sympathy. I'm just working out my feelings by acknowledging them in writing.

I think I will not put up a tree this year. I just want to arrange the manger scene on the mantle. That will help me to focus on the real message of Christmas. And I will go to church on Christmas Eve to spend the evening in quiet celebration and contemplation.

And, I will sincerely wish those around me a very Merry Christmas.

Wheels

My first car was a 1950 Studebaker Champion. Dad won it in a raffle in 1959 when I was fifteen. He seldom drove it. It sat in the driveway waiting for me to earn my driver’s license the next year. “Someday that car will be all yours,” my Dad would say. Oh, be still my heart, I would think to myself. The streets were filled with shiny new tail fins and chopped & channeled custom rods. My friends daydreamed about bolting Holly carburetors onto V8 engine blocks and cutting rows of louvers in their hoods. I had nightmares of driving into the student parking lot in what could pass for Flash Gordon’s escape pod. The Studebaker was a design “ahead of it’s time”, in 1950. It featured a big round bullet-nose that looked like the air scoop of a German buzz bomb. The old-fashioned windshield was assembled from two flat panes joined by vertical chrome molding. By contrast, the rear window was a continuous wrap-around wall of glass. The car looked like it was designed to cut through the air at the speed of sound, backwards. Unfortunately, the old Studey was in fine mechanical shape. I abused it at every opportunity, hoping it would die on the side of the road. It did, eventually. A friend and I were on our way to meet two girls for a blind date when the engine threw a rod right through the oil pan. It happened while climbing a steep bridge. I had to back down in the face of oncoming traffic while my friend sat on the trunk lid frantically waving cars around us. It sat beneath the bridge for three weeks until a neighbor helped me tow it home, pulling me behind his pickup with a 12-foot chain at sixty miles an hour. In it’s final year the once-proud old Studebaker sat behind our house, serving as home to a pair of adopted stray dogs. I saw a car just like it recently at an antique auto show. The owner said it was worth thirty thousand dollars; unbelievable.

The first car I chose and bought myself was a used 1963 Volkswagen. What a great car! It was nearly unstoppable, like a Jeep. In the winter I enjoyed driving after the first snow before the plows cleared the roads. With a running start you could punch through a two-foot drift, throwing snow up and over the sloping hood. But, in winter the car’s inadequacies became evident. The six-volt electrical system didn’t have much muscle to turn over the engine in freezing temperatures. You had thirty seconds to get it started. After that, you needed two friends to push you up to speed so you could pop the clutch. Also, the heater and defroster were powered by warm air diverted from the air-cooled engine. It was always cold inside the car in winter. I carried a scraper in the glove compartment to clear ice from the inside of the windshield. I had to breathe through my nose while driving; exhaling onto the windshield caused the glass to instantly frost over.

My first new car was a 1969 Buick GS California, a plain two-door sedan pretending to be a muscle car. I bought it as a gift for my first wife. We walked into the showroom and I said, “What car do you want?” She said “I like that yellow one, it’s pretty.” I told the salesman, “Don’t bother wrapping it, we’ll drive it home.” My wily skills of negotiation were surpassed only by my propensity for being a dork.

The only other new vehicle I ever bought was a 1987 Ford Econoline van. I purchased it at wholesale price and had a friend build it out with a custom interior. It had a straight-six engine and a four-speed manual transmission with a floor shifter. I enjoyed that van. It carried the family all over the country. I wore it out and eventually sold it in North Carolina, replacing it with a 4-wheel drive SUV in preparation for the move north to Pennsylvania.


I drive a Jeep today, a Grand Cherokee, bought used and subsequently upgraded with a replacement engine and rebuilt transmission. It is a good truck and just what is needed in country like this where snow can be significant.




As a boy I had a love affair with cars, like most young men do. But, over time I have come to view them as little more than a means of transportation. All I ask of a car or a truck now is that it be dependable and that its appearance not be embarrassing. Some people seem to view their cars as an extension of self. They select their vehicles to project a personal image or a statement of their values. I wonder how others judge me when they see my car… No, on second thought, I don’t wonder at all. In fact, I don’t care. I am what I am and I drive what I drive. The most significant connection between me and my car is right there in the driver’s seat, where the cushion molds itself to the contour of my bottom.

Killen's Pond

Summer in Felton, Delaware meant swimming in Killen’s Pond. The area is a state park today but in the sixties Killen’s Pond was just a small rural lake surrounded by farm fields and forest with a big dirt parking lot and picnic area at one end. There was just room enough for a half dozen powerboats to pull water skiers single-file around the shore.

We didn’t have a boat of our own but Dad’s friend, Junior, had a wooden speedboat with an Evinrude twenty-five horsepower outboard motor, powerful enough to pull two skiers in tandem. I had learned to ski several summers earlier in Minnesota and considered myself pretty good on a single slalom.

Dad was a big man; not really fat but, after a decade and a half in long-haul trucks, he had that big belly and swayed back so many drivers develop after spending years behind the wheel. A love of beer on hot summer days only contributed to his girth. The summer sun made Dad hot, beer made him fearless and the water beckoned with a promise of cool relief until Dad could take it no longer and yelled out to Junior, “Bring the boat around, I’m going to ski!”

Dad had never skied in his life. I convinced him to ride in the boat just once to watch me demonstrate the basics; take off, maintain balance, cross the wake, swing out, drop the tow rope, dismount. As we made a circuit of the lake my misgiving grew. He ignored my example, instead laughing and talking with Junior as they finished another beer. I was skeptical at the end of the tow as I swung toward the beach and prepared to come in. Unconsciously, I made my usual dismount; racing toward the shore at high speed then leaning back suddenly to decelerate, stepping out of the skis and onto dry sand at the last moment. That must have been the one thing of which Dad took note, unfortunately.

We couldn’t find a safety vest large enough to fit him. “I don’t need that damned thing anyway,” he declared and settled back in the shallow water like I showed him while I held his ski tips above the surface and Junior eased the slack out of the rope.

“Hit it!” he yelled. There were a dozen false starts; some ending with a backward splash, others in a face-first watery explosion as the boat yanked him out of his skis. The last unsuccessful attempt nearly dragged the boat to a halt. He fell forward but kept a death-grip on the handle as he disappeared beneath the surface, plowing a giant wave before him until his head dug a crater into the sandy bottom.

“Give up,” I pleaded. He was not a quitter.

To everyone’s surprise he rose from the water almost gracefully on the next try and with a loud cowboy “Whoop” he and the boat disappeared from view behind a line of trees. It was exciting. I could hear him laugh and holler above the roar of the motor as they followed the curve of the far bank. When they came again into view Dad was steady on his feet and looked like he had been skiing for years. I was proud of him. He was fearless, adventurous. How many other middle-aged men would show the confidence and courage to try again and again, right there in front of everyone until they had achieved their goal and mastered a new sport? What a man! What a dad!

Junior was lining up the boat on its approach for a dismount. I hoped Dad remembered how to cross the wake and swing out toward the shore. I saw him make a couple of tentative moves toward the swell of the wake as they quickly approached. Come on, I said under my breath, make your move.

Suddenly, he leaned to the right and dug the edge of both skis into the water. Like a rocket he shot up and over the wake and was airborne in an instant. “Too fast!” I shouted. “Oh shit!” I heard him yell.

Everyone who witnessed what happened next did not stop talking about it for the rest of the summer. Even now, as I write these words, the scene unfolds before my eyes as though I am transported back to Killen’s Pond, standing knee-deep in water and watching in slow-motion horror.

Dad flies twenty feet beyond the wake, arcing three feet over the surface, landing upright on his skis at thirty miles per hour only fifty feet from the onrushing shore.

“Oh my God!” my mother screams from somewhere behind me.
“Oh shit, oh shit!” Dad yells over and over, knowing that this can not end well.
“Lean back!” I shout across the water, praying he will remember how I leaned back to slow down before stepping out of my skis.

He is hurtling right at me. I have no choice but to step aside, knowing it is impossible to stop his momentum. A collision would mean broken bones for us both. He zips past me heading straight for the beach.

“Lean back!” I shout one last time, but it is too late. His skis hit the slope of the sand in a sudden stop. Jumping out of the foot grips Dad hits the ground running. His legs and arms are a blur as they pump furiously, propelling him at a pace he has never run in his life. For an instant it seems he can defy the limits of human performance and remain upright, but ever so slowly he begins leaning further and further in the direction of his trajectory.

Knowing in his heart that the end is near he thrusts his arms out straight and braces for the fall. Impact is inevitable, but with what? Now he is beyond the beach and approaching the tree line. Directly before him stands a pair of maple trees, their trunks separated by less than two feet of space. Dad aims for the space between and hurls himself to the ground like a runner stealing home plate. He slides through the opening and beyond, now heading for the parking lot, his speed diminished only a little.

“Oh my God!” Mother still screams. Dad has fallen silent except for the sound of flesh scraping gravel. I run in his direction, wanting to be there when he finally skids to a halt.

From the corner of my eye I see a car moving across the parking lot on an intersecting course. Dad slides into the path of the vehicle, throwing up a cloud of dust as the driver stabs at the brake pedal.

I can’t look. Oh God, please don’t let this happen!

Mother stops screaming. The world falls silent. I open my eyes and see Dad lying motionless a foot in front of the car. They both stopped in time.

Slowly, Dad rolls over and sits up, his chest, stomach and hands scraped nearly raw and beginning to bleed. Strangers reach him before I do and help him to his feet. Mother and I join him and together we walk down to the lake to rinse off the dust and gravel. Eventually, Dad breaks the silence.

“Well,” he says, “that was fun. I don’t think I’ll water ski again for a long time.”

Thankfully, he never did.

Remembering Felton

When asked where I am from I simply answer “Delaware.” If pressed for a city I offer “Wilmington”. I was born there, but I lived in many different towns all over the state. If I had to choose only one of them to call my hometown it would be Felton.



Felton is a very small town, little more than a crossroad on US 13, the major highway running North and South through the state. The population was six hundred when I lived there in the early sixties. It hasn’t grown much since then. There was one gas station with an attached diner, and one grocery store. The store was a small market that featured fresh beef from a cow slaughtered weekly by the proprietor. I attended school with his son and have witnessed the slaughter, a grizzly business.



As far as I know Felton is known for only one thing. It is the boyhood home of actor Robert Mitchum. Mitchum was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut and moved to Delaware after his father was killed in a railroad accident in Charleston, South Carolina. He attended Felton High School but quit before graduation, hitting the road to find adventure, ending up in Hollywood.











I also attended Felton High School. I lived in a bright yellow house across the road from the school’s front door, just down the street from the gas station, three blocks from the grocery. It felt like the precise geographic center of nowhere. When I heard the story of Robert Mitchum I immediately felt a kinship. We both had landed in Felton as boys and soon found compelling reasons to leave. He quit school at the age of sixteen and left. I lacked that opportunity. But, unlike Mitchum, I eventually found reasons to stay.



I call Felton my hometown because so many notable things happened to me in the year and a half I lived there. I made my first good friend, tasted alcohol, discovered girls, flirted with stage acting, and awakened a creative spirit. In Felton I grew from a boy into a young man. The process was sometimes painful but certainly memorable.

I arrived the summer before beginning the eleventh grade. The arrival of a new family in town was big news and when Jack heard it he sought me out. Jack was my age and lived on the other side of the schoolyard next to a parking lot filled with trucks that hauled live chickens. Constant exposure to feathers carried by the wind created an allergy that one day would exempt Jack from military service and, he believes, may have saved his life.

Jack became my first best friend. What made him special to me was that he thought that I was special. What made me special to him was that I was not from Felton, I was from a big city (Wilmington) and I was not a hick like everyone else in Felton. What Jack didn’t know was that Wilmington was not a big city (unless you were from Felton) and that I was a hick by almost anyone else’s measure. Jack wanted to hang around with me because he thought I was sophisticated. I wanted to hang around with Jack because his constant praise of me fed my ego and helped to fill the emotional void created by my inferiority complex. I don’t know if the relationship was good for either of us but it felt OK and we saw each other every day. Jack introduced me to the other kids when school began and it was comfortable to begin the year as the new kid having the endorsement of a local.


Throughout the school year my classmates were turning sixteen and getting a driver’s license. We were mobile. Evenings were spent cruising and sneaking beer. We were lucky to survive that first year on the road. We all were idiots; drag racing, driving while drinking, taunting other teens from nearby towns and challenging them to meet us for a rumble. What idiots we were!






For my sixteenth birthday my mother rented the VFW hall and invited my friends to a surprise party. It was sweet of her but embarrassing for me. She thought I had more friends than I really did, and that became painfully obvious when only about eight kids showed up. Jack passed the word around school but few people wanted to spend Saturday night having cake and Kool-Aid served by the new kid’s mother when they could be having real fun cruising country roads with six-packs of Pabst Blue Ribbon.



Jack tried to salvage the bittersweet evening by fixing me up with an easy girl from nearby Milford. He brought her by the VFW and whispered that she wanted to ride in the backseat with me. I told Mom I had a date, thanked her for the party and climbed in the back of Jack’s car. Twenty minutes later she was insisting that we take her home and complaining that, birthday or no birthday, she wasn’t going to spend another minute with some goofy kid who didn’t have any idea what to do. That was the evening I learned that alcohol could drown feelings. It was a remedy I would seek often in the ensuing years.


There were good times, too. I had a reel-to-reel tape recorder and Jack had a huge collection of 45-RPM rock and roll records. We spent many weekends in my room making recordings. We pretended to be disk jockeys; introducing records, doing phony commercials, news breaks, weather forecasts. Sometimes we would do interviews, pretending to be record producers or performers. Years later I would major in television and motion picture production, working at the local TV station as an announcer.




Felton High School was small, so small that the senior play required participation by juniors in order to fill the cast. The faculty drama advisor was Mr. Mason. He had a flair for drama, a trait that gave rise to whispered rumors in a town as small as Felton. Mr. Mason had always wanted to stage a musical. Somehow, he convinced Jack and I that we had the talent to make his dream a reality. I suspect he used flattery to wear us down. Suddenly, I found myself cast as a principle player in Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Mikado”, an elaborate costume musical set in feudal Japan. A reporter later published a review in the Wilmington Evening Journal that summarized our efforts as “Ambitious.” He was very kind.

The production was elaborate by small-town standards. We were costumed in elaborate garments fashioned from dyed bed sheets, hurriedly sewn by my mother who saved the play on the night of dress rehearsal when she stepped in for the costume committee after learning that they had completed almost nothing. A single piano served as our orchestra. We had a chorus of eight boys and eight girls in addition to the main actors. I played Ko-Ko, chief executioner of the town of Titipu. Jack played the Exchequer, Pooh-bah. We both had tons of lines and solo singing performances. The production played for three nights. It was crazy and amazing and frightening and fun. How we did it I will never know.

That year was the best of my boyhood. When my father later informed us that we were about to move again I received the news with regret for the first time. We had moved every year, changing houses and schools and friends. Usually, I was happy to make the change. But leaving Felton and the friends I made there would prove difficult and painful.

I returned to visit years later, attempting to rekindle old relationships. But, too much time had passed. Our friendships had been intense but had lasted only a short while. Time had eroded in reality what still existed only in my memory. I found Jack and reminisced about special moments from our past, only to discover that he had no recollection of some of my most cherished memories.

Memories are personal treasures, freezing moments in time that portray the world as we would have it be. They are fragile and need to be protected. Else, they may not survive intact to bring comfort and joy in later years when they attain their greatest value.